Diderot
by Ohtze
Summary: Hermione Granger hates her name. It's a slick sort of hate that snuck up unexpectedly, but no matter how much she loathes herself, she doesn't hate her name quite like seventeen year-old Sirius hates being a Black. Their skin is peeling, and everyone's wearing masks for faces. Marauders-era, time-turner, definitely AUish.
1. Steps of Atonement

**A word of warning** **:** I always write M, and with that rating there comes certain expectations that most readers should be familiar with (violence, mature themes, etc.). The tags on this story are also fairly accurate—but I will say there will be a fair amount of romance, too. Suffice to say, things will be dark. This is the only time that I'll mention it.

 **Disclaimer** **:** This fanwork is intended for personal, non-commercial use only. All creative works off which this fanwork is based are the property of J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended.

 **A/N:** Chapter revised October 23, 2017. Reviving this story from the dead and continuing it, because it's been rotting on my HD for ages.

Chapter I: Steps of Atonement

* * *

Hermione Granger did not like her name.

There were other things that she was more critical of when it came to her person—her hair, her habit of cutting others off mid-sentence—but in general she'd never considered herself a self-hating person by nature. Hermione also knew how common self-loathing was amongst insufferable Know-It-Alls and perfectionists like herself, so the fact that she'd never fallen prey to this peculiar quirk filled her with no small measure of confidence.

She loved books, and how they brought her comfort; she loved how **good** she was at casting spells, and how competent a witch she'd proven herself to be despite everyone disparaging her heritage. Hermione loved how she put brains before brawn, and logic before all else; how she was able to remain rational in the most difficult of circumstances. She'd used her intellect to save her best friends from danger ad nauseam. It made her feel needed, being the person that she was. It made her feel wanted, and Hermione had been so proud of her accomplishments. By and large—for the longest time—she'd been exceptionally happy.

But.

 **But**. And that "but" was important.

There were also things she didn't like about being Hermione Granger. Those things had grown particularly prominent during the war, and in the immediate aftermath.

It had started off—as most things do—with exhaustion. With running and fleeing and too many sleepless nights. It had grown larger by listening to Harry scream through his nightmares and Ron lashing out, with _Obliviating_ her parents and Dumbledore's demise and Hogwarts crumbling. With those dead bodies falling in flashes of fluorescent green light all around her.

It began and ended with Bellatrix. Bellatrix Lestrange, maddest witch on this side of the moon; crouched over her with a dagger in hand as she cackled and carved _Mudblood_ with unnerving precision into the soft skin of her arm. Merlin take her, but Hermione couldn't forget that. The witch was dead, but she could still hear her voice.

They had won the war of course, and Voldemort had been vanquished. But hatred died hard and trauma died harder, and with all those little things adding up, Hermione's relentless sense of self-determination began to crack. Just a bit.

It began with the ending: with the slow-strangling aftermath. With countless nightmares and nights of dreamless sleep potions, with putting extra locks on her door and booby-trapping hexes around her flat. It continued on with speaking less, with telling people who asked that she was simply tired, or a bit worn thin. Hermione drifted from friends, and she drifted from school. She decided to take a break from Hogwarts, but after she did she went home and burnt her pictures of her parents in a fit of rage.

She had no parents now, Hermione decided, and she and Ron had fallen apart as quickly as they'd met. Two ill-fitting puzzle pieces, they were, doomed for dysfunction. It was for the best. Still, the failures in her personal life began to eat at her, crunching at her bones akin to rats. Some days, Hermione wondered how she tasted.

 _Filthy_ , Bellatrix said.

Hermione tried to ignore her whispering indecision, but as the months dragged on the strangling sensation got worse. Around July, she decided that she didn't like **anything** about herself. Hermione despised her big mouth, which had gotten her in trouble too often to count. Her extreme love of books was freakish at best. Brains got you nowhere, she opined, unless you could think quick on your feet, and outside an academic setting she simply floundered. _Crick, crack,_ went the holes in her psyche, and slowly those chasms of self-determination grew more entrenched. Bellatrix Lestrange had been a cruel witch; a very cruel witch, so of course the dagger she'd used had been cursed something awful. It wasn't until after the war that Hermione had realized how permanently she'd been branded. It was a horrible, physical reminder of her past.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Ginny had asked one day. Hermione simply smiled and nodded. The pain that radiated from her elbow all the way down to her fingertips had become a constant by then. During the war Bellatrix's mark had been beneath bandages. The bleeding had stopped, and of course there'd been pain, but Hermione had been too preoccupied with everything else to notice that the word _Mudblood_ didn't scab over. Once the Battle of Hogwarts had ended, she'd finally realized what was happening. Hermione had turned to her books in response: upbeat, bright-eyed, and full of determination. She'd tried every spell and counter spell she could think of, every potion and magical device. Still the wound remained raw and weeping. Although the rot didn't spread, the nerve damage along her arm got worse. Her failure to find a cure hurt even more. Hermione **hated** failure.

"Don't worry," she'd assured the younger girl, then added ruefully, "I'm the smartest witch of my age. I'll figure something out."

Ginny laughed at the joke, and Hermione had smiled, but she never found a spell to get rid of the curse.

A few weeks later in a fit of frustration, she'd tried to carve the damn thing off. Hermione was a weakling when it came to her injuries—a full-fledged coward who avoided physical pain like the plague. The only reason she'd attempted the blade was because she'd been desperate. Locked in her room, buzzed on Firewhiskey, she'd taken a knife to her arm and gritted her teeth, slicing the skin off piece by piece until there was nothing but red. Unfortunately when she'd healed her forearm, the _Mudblood_ brand had remained. Short of cutting off her own limb, it had seemed like she was out of options.

Hermione had screamed, then, because _damn Bellatrix,_ and damn everything she stood for.

 _But you love me, poppet._

Hermione ignored her.

Plagued by pain, her fingers curling, she'd finally decided it was time to move on with her life. Hermione started a daily regimen of not enough bandages and too many pain potions, to help manage the aftereffects of the curse. She wore long sleeves and thick robes without fail to stave off the questions, and towards the end of July Hermione landed a job at _Tomes and Scrolls_ , overseeing their backroom to pay for the bills. It was a position that was far below her station, but one that she needed.

It was punishment, Hermione decided: punishment for her so-called brilliant mind failing her. At least working in the back room of a bookstore gave her some much-needed peace and quiet. She was desperate for time and air.

"Why won't you come back to Hogwarts?" Ginny demanded, early in August. She'd been upset, and Hermione had known why; Ron wasn't doing too well, and neither was George. Harry was erratic at best. "Please. Classes starts soon. It's… it's almost September."

Hermione smiled tightly and waved her wand to put away another stack of books. The painkillers had begun wearing off, and the day that Ginny came to visit had been a bad day for the shakes—one of the many side effects of being under a prolonged _Cruciatus_ curse. Hermione had been having lots of nightmares about Bellatrix by then, and they were getting worse. She hid her rotting arm beneath her heavy robes and tried not to limp.

"I **will** be back," she amended, and at the time she'd truly thought she would. She loved Hogwarts and all her classes; she loved the Room of Requirement and the rotating stairs, the dust in the library and the roar of the Great Hall during mealtime. That feeling of _home_ that permeated everything. "I'm just taking a short break, like everyone else. I'm emancipated now, you know, and I… I have to save up a bit of money, for my education." She didn't mention her parents directly, anymore. No one did.

"I've been talking with my dad," Ginny said, sitting down on an abandoned chair as she'd crossed her arms over her chest. She'd looked extremely tired, but everyone had been in those days. "He thinks you might have a muggle condition, called _P-T-E-D_. George has it too. We're taking him to St. Mungo's this week. Maybe you should come along. Stop by for a visit. Harry would love to see you."

Hermione had given Ginny a befuddled look, and then it had been her turn to laugh. She'd hoped the younger girl couldn't hear the strain in her voice.

"It's called PT **S** D, and I don't have it, Ginny. Besides, I just saw Harry on Tuesday for lunch. It's not like I'm not turning into a hermit."

"But Hermione–"

"Really, I'm fine. I don't have PTSD. And honestly, I'm a Mudblood. I know far more about these muggle diseases than you."

Ginny drew back sharply at her comment, looking at her with horror. Hermione had continued on with her filing, humming away, until she'd noticed the younger woman staring at her like she'd sprouted a second head.

"What?" she'd asked her in alarm. "Ginny, what is it?"

"Don't call yourself that," Ginny said, looking affronted. There had been tears in her eyes, threatening to fall.

"Don't call myself what?"

"That," Ginny gasped, gesturing helplessly in the air. She'd started shaking. "That, that **word**! How could you be so cruel?"

It took the infamously intelligent Granger a painfully long minute to catch on, and then her mouth had formed into a perfect _o_. She'd given Ginny a tight but benevolent smile.

"Sorry," she said. Beneath her robes, the scar on her forearm had ached. "Force of habit. But the answer's still _no_. How about we meet for dinner this weekend? Or maybe lunch instead? I have Sunday off."

Ginny continued to look like she was on the verge of crying.

"Come back to Hogwarts," she'd pleaded. "Come back to school. You love it there."

"I do, and I will, just not right this second. I need… I need some time off. A bit of time to think."

"But you're **Hermione**. You're always thinking."

And that was the problem, really: the weight of a name that shouldn't have weighed that much at all. Hermione was Hermione Granger—muggle-born, lover of books and creature comforts, friend to house elves and house cats alike—but she was also the brightest witch of her age, war hero and voice of reason. Try as she might to hide in the backroom of a Hogsmeade bookshop, the world still wanted more of her, and they were relentless.

What was she doing, the papers asked? What had happened to the Golden Trio, and why had she broken up with Ron? Soon the tabloids drifted away from her specifically, but the questions they raised became more sinister, and definitely alarming. Just reading the headlines brought a chill down Hermione's spine.

There were bodies, the papers said; missing bodies, both of witches and wizards, and the headlines were so reminiscent of the lead-up to the war that Hermione had a bit of a breakdown. When mid-August rolled around, she packed her bags, fleeing to the Scottish countryside. Once there she holed herself up in a decrepit cottage on the island of Hirta. Not long after, her arm began bleeding again. She still couldn't find the cure to the curse, and her nights were plagued with dreams of Bellatrix.

 _Poppet,_ Bellatrix crooned, swirling around her in a cloud of ink. Her skeletal fingers would drum a constant beat against her shoulders. _Filthy little poppet, come out and play._ _Bella misses you._

Whenever the papers arrived at her door, Hermione burnt them. She cast multiple charms to make the cottage harder to find. She'd had enough of the outside world and the war, she decided. She needed a break. Then she'd go back. Bellatrix could rot.

In the days leading up to her last fateful decision, Harry sent her a letter. Hermione didn't read it until it was too late, but when she did—vision blurred by tears, her hands shaking—she'd barely been able to make sense of the words.

There was a spell, Harry said: a spell to make Horcruxes, or a counter-spell of some sort. He'd just found the letter from Sirius, stashed away in the ruins of Grimmauld Place. He hadn't known about it, and he was sorry. By Merlin, he was going to make this right.

The letter meandered from one topic to another; babbling on about the Chamber of Secrets before intermingling with snippets about the brief but tragic existence of one such Sirius Black. He'd been Harry's godfather, to be sure, and Hermione had held him in the highest regard, but she'd gotten the impression right from the get-go that the man was uncomfortable around her. The renegade wizard had been an excellent dueler—a brutal one, made hard from grief and years in Azkaban—but he'd never struck her as the sort to go mystery hunting, especially for something as delicate and time consuming as this.

Then Hermione had turned over the letter, and she'd read the second page. She'd read the words, vision blurring, and she'd screamed so loud the glass on her desk had nearly shattered.

After that she'd burned the letter, along with the notice of Harry's death.

All of it. It had all been for **nothing** , and they'd lost so much.

They'd found Harry's body at the bottom of a well, the notice said. Ron was gone, the Ministry bombed. And it was there, right there—with her arm bleeding and tears in her eyes—that Hermione began to truly hate Hermione Granger.

All sneaky-like, side-winding into her psyche like the sound of Bellatrix's laughter.

* * *

Hermione's arrival at Hogsmeade in the fall of 1977 was a bit of a blur. She made sure to dress the part, wearing robes that were appropriate for the time period. As an extra measure, she cast a _Not Notice Me_ charm on herself. The less people saw her, the better.

It was raining the day she arrived; a heavy sort of rain that came down in torrents that was more suited for spring than autumn, and within a minute of landing Hermione was soaked to the bone and shivering. She'd brought everything she knew she'd need for a single year, and with a heavy heart and a sense of dread she'd trudged down the cobblestone streets to the _Three Broomsticks Inn_. Once there, she'd made sure to rent a long-term room at the back of the establishment. When Madame Rosmerta—who looked the same age in 1977 as she did in 1997—asked why she was out on her own, Hermione had given her a tight-lipped smile and told her she was looking for work. It wasn't the same thing as saying _I'm an orphan_ , and in Hermione's mind it sounded better. It made her feel more in control of her surroundings, even though she knew she wasn't.

The room she'd purchased was located at the tiptop of the attic, where various knickknacks and magical objects were stored. Above her the ceiling was so steep she had to hunch when she walked, and the rooftop leaked like a sieve during the rain, but it was private. Beyond the knickknacks her room was bare, save for a lonely little bed in the center that was covered by a threadbare grey blanket, and a mattress that sagged in the middle. The whole area smelt of mildew and wet wood.

Ever so slowly, her limbs trembling from another bad day of the _Cruciatus_ after-effects, Hermione unpacked her bags. She put her books in the driest corner she could find and her potion supplies under her bed. Her meager assortment of thick black robes and nondescript clothes were neatly folded into a small wooden trunk at the end of it. It was August twenty-ninth now, and early in the morning. As Hermione magicked a calendar to hang on a nearby wall—crossing off the first day in the old world with a flick of her wrist—she felt a terrible pang of nostalgia spring to life in her chest. Classes at Hogwarts would be starting soon, and she missed them dearly. She missed the hustle and bustle on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. She missed the chugging of the steam engine and the shark shriek of the whistle as the Hogwarts Express pulled out of the station; the varnished halls and the green-seated cabins. She missed the way the train wound around bends and meandered through hills, the smell of the crisp autumn air tickling her senses. She would never get that now. Not again.

Sniffling audibly, Hermione lifted her good hand to wipe tears from her eyes. Thank goodness for attics and silencing charms: she hated it when people saw her crying. Her supplies all packed away, she took out her Time Turner, previously hidden on a long brassy chain between her thick robes and shirt. She'd had to cobble it together from pieces of others, like some sort of Frankenstein monster in the dead of night. Bottom lip quavering, Hermione drew a protective rune on the floor. Afterwards, she placed the TimeTurner in the center of it, transfiguring a nearby candelabra into a heavy, medium-sized rock.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Hermione brought the stone down and crushed the device.

 _Tick, tick, tack_ went the Time Turner as it broke into pieces, and Hermione watched as the sands leaked out; the metal spun and warped in on itself like a miniature black hole until there was nothing.

When the Time Turner was gone, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief. This was it: a one-way trip to the end of line. There was nothing to distract her from her task now. No second chances, no do overs, and the finality of it all steeled her resolve.

Except.

When Hermione turned around, determined to sleep, she moved just in time to see a small white envelope with a red wax seal being slipped under the crack of her door. She cursed then, and mostly in despair, because of course. Of course she should have know that Dumbledore would've found her. She was still in the books.

 _Ms. Granger,_ the letter began. _It is my delight to welcome your transfer into our seventh year classes. School begin on September 1st. When you arrive at Hogwarts, please see me immediately. Below, you will find a list of supplies needed for school._

Hermione read the list. Then she wept, because even though being a student made her task marginally easier—giving her access to supplies she'd thought she'd have to do without—she couldn't escape her name. Not even here. Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age, cursed with a heavy title that should have been worthless. This time, she had to end things. For Harry, and the others.

 _Me too, poppet,_ Bellatrix cackled. _Me three._ Hermione shut her out. On her arm, the _Mudblood_ brand burned.

* * *

Hermione's first thought upon meeting seventeen year-old Sirius Black was that it wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair, not for her but for **him**. In no world was it right, because he'd been a beautiful boy with a beautiful smile and so much to live for, only it had been taken away from him; locked away in a decrepit cell under the threat of a Dementor's kiss.

When Hermione had been in school and Sirius had been alive, she remembered him as a gaunt, haggard man; a ghost with too-sharp cheekbones and bird-bone wrists, his face raw-looking from lack of nourishment and the indents of his spine standing out in sharp prominence. Black was his last name, and black was his hair, a thick nest of matted waves that fell past his shoulders. Always, he'd purposely angled his face away from her to hide his eyes, his skeletal fingers picking at his beer mug like a scab.

He'd never liked looking her in the eye, that Sirius Black. He'd never been comfortable around her in general, although he'd been downright fanatical about keeping her safe. She was Harry's best friend, after all. He had a list of priorities, and it was short. Very succinct.

"Don't look at me," Sirius had snarled one night, when she'd come down to the kitchen in his miserly home to find him sitting in a slump at the table. Hermione had promptly asked him if he was all right. She had her priorities, too.

"DON'T LOOK AT ME!" he'd screamed when she didn't leave. Then he'd thrown his mug against the wall and upended a chair, before turning into a dog and fleeing. Sirius Black didn't like staying in Grimmauld Place, everyone knew. He had no happy memories there.

 _Traitor_ , Bellatrix Lestrange hissed in her ear as she stood in the hall, her spider-thin fingers curling around her shoulders as Hermione stared at her future-dead cousin. _Bastard blood-traitor. Mudblood lover! Filthy little Black!_

"Hi Luv," seventeen year-old Sirius said. He extended a slim hand in greeting. Almost-eighteen-year-old Hermione Granger just stood there, her books falling out of her arms as her senses deserted her. The tomes went a-tumbling, _thud_ , _thud, thud_ onto the floor. There was the overwhelming pulse of her heart in her ears. The too-young Sirius' face was practically swimming in front of her.

Hermione swallowed hard; she struggled to breathe. It was painful to see him like this. To see anyone that she even remotely recognized. Dumbledore had been bad enough when he'd greeted her that morning. Sirius was taller than her by an entire head. Hermione didn't know why she hadn't noticed this detail until now, then vaguely deduced that future-dead Sirius had always walked with a hunch, as if perpetually afraid of getting hit. His younger self was wearing voluminous black robes in a casual sort of way, his tie loose and his shirt rumpled. His smile was rogue-ish, his eyes grey. His teeth were as white as his skin.

 _Remember the plan,_ she told herself.

 _Remember_ ** _our_** _plan,_ Bellatrix corrected. Hermione tried to ignore her.

"Luv, are you alright?"

No. No, she definitely wasn't.

Seventeen year-old Sirius's had the same sort of hair that he did in her time; inky dark and oh-so-thick, only now it was lustrous instead of matted. _Slytherin good looks with a Gryffindor heart_ , Hermione thought, her memories jagged; a beautiful boy with a beautiful smile and too much to live for, the victim of an ugly life. It was devastating.

"Do you need help with your books?" Sirius asked.

There was a strained sort of quality to his smile now: a queer kind of neediness behind the warmth. If Hermione hadn't known better, she would've thought he was seeking approval, but the future-dead Sirius had never sought sanction for anything. Not once. Her books were scattered like dominoes across the floor. Hermione crouched down, muttering apologies again and again as she scrambled to collect the tomes. Her hands continued to tremble however, and she couldn't seem to pick them up. It was all she could do to remember what Dumbledore had told her. The end-result of her master plan.

 _Cissy_ , snapped Bellatrix, tapping her foot. _I want to tell our plan to_ ** _Cissy_** _. Go find her._

"Sorry Luv," Sirius said. He was crouched in front of her now, his long black robes pooling around him and his shaggy black hair hiding his face. "I didn't mean to startle you. You were just carrying so many books, and I thought you might need a bit of help—"

Hermione swallowed again and tried not to scream. She needed to get out of the hall. There was a kindness to Sirius' words that made her shake more; an openness to his expressions she was downright terrified of, because she was hearing his talks with Harry in the tone of his voice. Hermione knew she definitely didn't deserve any kindness, however unintentional. She'd probably get him killed in this timeline, too.

 _Kill him,_ Bellatrix agreed, stalking in circles. _Definitely kill him. Take out our wand, poppet! Filthy little Black._

"Oh," was all Hermione managed to say. Even that was barely above a whisper.

Sirius stacked her books in a pile: a color-coded pile with all the spines facing the same way, smallest ones on the top and biggest books on the bottom. Hermione found herself so thrown by the action that she couldn't help but watch. Every move he made was fastidiously neat, and she knew she had bigger things to focus on, she **knew** , but she just couldn't help it. She'd never seen him act this way before. Then Hermione realized _oh, of course_. Sirius was a pureblood, and had been raised as such; neatness was simply another thing that Azkaban had stripped from him, along with his sanity and health. He'd been dying a slow death since the demise of James and Lily Potter. The lingering wastefulness of it almost caused her to shriek.

"I'm Sirius Black, by the way," Sirius said. He stretched out his hand, his tone still kind. He was **so** kind, almost as if he knew how nervous she was, and maybe he did, because her hands were visibly wavering. She couldn't seem to stop. Hermione didn't know what hurt worse: her arm or her heart.

"You're a Gryffindor, right? I haven't seen you before."

"Transfer," Hermione managed to mumble out.

"What?" he said, leaning forward.

"I'm a **transfer** ," she said, louder this time, but her voice was shaking too. She had to escape. Trying to hide behind her hair, Hermione began gathering up her books, ignoring the pale hand that was still outstretched and waiting.

"Transfer from where?"

"From… from…" It didn't matter from where, but it did. She needed to say something, but she was mute. _Here_ , she wanted to scream, _I'm from_ ** _here_** _,_ but she could say that either, and the brightest witch of her age was no longer the brightest. In an instant, her words failed her. Her tongue stumbled over the _from_ again and again. Hermione couldn't do this. Not with seventeen year-old Sirius Black crouched in front of her.

"It's alright," Sirius was saying. He laughed. Although the gesture seemed strained, it wasn't cruel; if anything, he sounded nervous too. "It's fine, you don't have to tell me." There was a pause., "What… what year are you in?"

Hermione had never heard Sirius falter in conversation. She had never heard him sound even the slightest bit unsure, but she could tell his smile was fading fast. What followed was an uncomfortable silence; a long, awkward pause, where Hermione hunched in on herself, her books held close to her chest and her face hidden behind her hair. Sirius kept his hand in the air, waiting for her to take it, but she didn't.

"Did I say something to—"

"Seventh," Hermione said, all in a rush, cutting him off and stumbling over her words as she fought back a fresh round of tears. "I'm… I'm in seventh."

In front of her Sirius sighed. Hermione saw the way his shoulders lowered, how his whole form seemed to loosen with relief. "That's great," he said happily. "Really. I'm in seventh year, too. If you want, after lunch today me n' Prongs can show you around a bit. Prongs is great, he's my best—"

"That's alright," Hermione said quickly, hunching up further as she began to discreetly scuttle away. "It's fine, you don't have to. I'm sure you're busy." Sirius was bad enough, but seeing Harry in his father's face was something she definitely couldn't handle right now. Not at the same time.

 _Don't think about it, just don't,_ but she couldn't help herself. Hermione thought of the two letters on her desk in Hirta; one overdue, the other black, starting with the words _Ms. Hermione Granger, my deepest condolences_. Merlin's beard, she was going to be sick.

"What's your name?" Sirius asked. He definitely sounded unsure now. Hermione could literally feel his relief falling away as a strange sort of delicacy took over his tone. She blinked hard, trying to clear her vision of moisture. The boy's hand was still outstretched. Finally, tortuously, Hermione reached out and took it. Her fingers were engulfed by his. His skin was warm.

"Hermione," she said softly, and _ah_ , there it was: the lack of quick thinking was failing her again. The tremble to her voice was noticeable. "Her-Hermione Granger."

 _Filthy_ , Bellatrix hissed. Hermione could feel the Death Eater's nails dragging down her back. _Filthy little Mudblood! How dare you! How dare you talk to the traitor! After everything I told you! After everything we shared!_

"I don't recognize it," Sirius said as shook her hand. There was relief in his tone once more.

Sirius had strange hands, Hermione decided. Aristocratic and slim with pianist fingers, but noticeable rough along the palms. His knuckles were scuffed. The future-dead Sirius had never let her touch him. The future-dead Sirius had been downright skittish of her presence.

"Are you a half-blood?" Sirius asked, almost excitedly. There was desperate edge beneath the cheerfulness that inexplicably made Hermione very, very sad. "I don't know too many half-bloods, but Prong's girl is muggle-born. I love their music, by the way. It's really great. I went to see one of their bands in concert with Prongs last spring, and I—"

Hermione shuddered involuntarily. Sirius stopped, and his babbling abruptly died away into dust. There was another long, uncomfortable silence between them; another period of nothingness where his grip loosened around her palm and Hermione stared resolutely towards the floor. When Sirius spoke again, his tone was sharp.

"Is it because I'm a Black?"

Hermione looked up in surprise. And oh, what a mistake that was.

Sirius Black had been a beautiful boy with a beautiful smile, only he wasn't smiling anymore, and there was something terribly brittle about his expression. He was lovely to look at, with his lily-white skin and pewter grey eyes, but Hermione remembered him as Harry's godfather. She remembered him as a broken man with a broken body and too much anger; a man who threw chairs and screamed through his nightmares and shied away from her as if she were poison. She couldn't see how they were one it in the same. It wasn't fair.

"No," she said quickly, blinking hard. In front of her Sirius' expression morphed to one of shock. "No, of course not." Hermione quickly withdrew her hand from his and desperately tried to remember her plan.

 _Our plan,_ Bellatrix hissed. **_Ours_** _, just like our wand. Time to share, poppet._

"Why are you crying?" Sirius asked.

He was full of brittle edges now, all glass and shards. Hermione felt it, then. She felt the proverbial ground crumbling beneath her, her wits deserting her as the full weight of her situation hit her like a runaway train. She clapped a free hand over her mouth to stifle a cry, but she felt it now; wetness on skin, tears on her cheeks. The face in front of her was blurry. So was the floor.

"Hey," Sirius began softly, reaching for her again. "Hey Luv, it's alright—"

"I'm sorry," Hermione choked out. She bowed her head and backed away from him, nearly tripping over her feet and dropping her books a second time in her haste to get away. "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I don't know why… I… I just need a minute." She needed more than a minute. She needed a whole lifetime, but she'd already had that, and it still wasn't enough.

Turning on her heels, Hermione fled down the hall, away from seventeen year-old Sirius Black towards the girls' lavatories. She spent her first day back at Hogwarts crying in the bathroom with Moaning Myrtle.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

So I grew up on Harry Potter. I love it, and I love the fandom, but I haven't read the books in awhile, so my memories on certain details might be a bit hazy. I told myself (and was thoroughly convinced) that I would never write a HP fic. I've got too many projects going on, and there are literally thousands upon thousands of fantastic stories out there to read, so there was really no reason for me to try my hand at it. That said, I was given a wonderful prompt by an anon, and I couldn't resist. I've also been out of sorts of late, and needed a side-project to help me get back into the swing of things, so we'll see how this goes.

Just a word of warning: I have other fanfics on the go right now, plus a ton of original work, so updates on _Diderot_ will be **extremely** erratic. My apologies in advance.


	2. Puppy Love

**A/N:** Chapter revised October 23, 2017.

Chapter II: Puppy Love

* * *

Sirius Black loved the girls.

He loved all sorts of girls, and witches specifically; he loved long hair that looped and twirled along narrow shoulders; he loved the way their robes billowed over breasts and how they walked with a sway to their hips; how they sighed his name and the way that they moaned. He loved how girls would bite down on full bottom lips and blush like mad whenever he so much as smirked in their direction.

Sirius Black wasn't really a one-woman-kind-of-guy, and he didn't really have a goal. He liked tall girls and short girls, both thick and skinny; he loved girls with big breasts or no breasts at all; girls with blond hair or brown, black or red; Pure-blood or muggle-born, half-blood or squib. Sirius Black was a hopeless, irredeemable womanizer, and usually he spent his days perfecting this quirk to a fault. He was a Pure-blood prince who belonged to everybody. And although he only ever spent a night or two with each girl in question—maybe two weeks tops, if he **really** liked them—he was always kind to his paramours once he dropped them. It was part of his unflappable charm.

Well, mostly he was kind. Usually. With Pure-bloods like himself, he could get a bit harsh. He was devastatingly generous until he wasn't. Loyal friend until you crossed him, and then he was all mother's wrath and vicious, uncontrollable spite. Walburga's son Sirius was, even though he was loath to admit it; complete with roaring rage and Pure-blood mania, just like his bitch of a cousin Bellatrix.

Gryffindor, he liked to remind himself. He was in **Gryffindor** , and the rest of his family could eat it, for all he cared. Even still, there was the Slytherin side of him that lingered in bits and pieces, all wounded and angry. He'd been sorted into the wrong house—no lions amongst this Pure-blood brood—but Sirius was okay with that. He'd wanted it.

Maybe. Potentially. Some days he wasn't sure.

So Sirius focused on girls, and sometimes Quidditch, and despite his aristocratic good looks he lived life sort of rough. Nihilism was key, and he was dangerously reckless, but he adored his ladies. He didn't like thinking about the less-than-pleasant aspects of life, so he thought about them: about their soft skin and their swaying hips and long looping hair. Sirius was not the introspective sort, nor the kind of guy to settle down like his best buddy Prongs.

Then, he'd met her.

Sirius didn't know why, but he really, really liked her. He liked her enough to date her; he liked her enough to date her for a whole two months. Sirius liked her so much he was trying to find her in the halls and staring at her in class and scribbling down her name in his notebooks, then crossing out her last name and putting his own down instead.

 _Hermione Granger. Hermione Black._ It was pathetic, but he couldn't help himself. The only thing that was missing from his Notebook of Doom were the hastily scribbled hearts. Maybe it was because she was purposely avoiding him, and he loved a challenge. Maybe it was because she didn't seem to care for his infamous last name at all. But Merlin take him, Sirius liked her like he loved his freedom. He was so crazy over Hermione that he was failing all his classes and he'd only been back at school one week. He was going crazy just trying to find time to talk to her, and Moony, Wormtail and Prongs had determined they were never going to let him hear the end of it.

"Ba-a-a-a-ad." Prongs began bleating at him in the Great Hall during dinner one day. "You got it ba-a-a-a-ad."

"Stop it!" hissed Lily, smacking his arm, and Prongs yelped. "Don't be cruel!"

At first all Sirius did was sit there despondently, clenching his spoon in his tightly fisted right hand. He glared over the table at the ever-indomitable James Potter.

"I'm not being cruel! Sirius can take it," his best friend declared. Lily slapped his arm again, and harder this time.

"Not him, you daft loon!" she said in a too-loud whisper. "Her. I mean **her**. Merlin, she's half-scared out of her wits most times. Do you know what the rumors would do to her?!"

And then Sirius got angry. Really, really angry—like mother-dearest levels of rage. He forgot himself, just for a moment, and he forgot he was at Hogwarts and not amongst Blacks. Casting curses on your best friend was not the best course of action, even if you were totally convinced the lady in question was the love of your life, but this was about her. This was about Hermione, and how she was already as jumpy as a half-dead horse. How **dare** Prongs try to make her feel uncomfortable.

How dare he be so cruel to Granger.

Sirius had always been a good friend—the best friend, who'd resorted to Slytherin tricks and Pure-blood charm just to steer Lily Evans their way. But somewhere between imagining Hermione's hand in his and hexing Prongs black and blue, Sirius ended up springing across the table, ankle-deep in mashed potatoes, and slugging James Potter across the face. He had a lady to defend, and Sirius was shite at long-term thinking.

"Again!" Lily shrieked. "You're doing it **again**!"

"Pay up," Remus whispered to Peter over some bet or another, and the smaller boy reached into his pocket, handing over a collection of chocolate frogs with a frown. The whole hall was staring, and James was clawing at him, but just as Sirius was getting him into a headlock Professor McGonagall swept in; separating the two of them sans wand and yanking them up by their earlobes.

"Detention!" she shrieked. "Both of you, after class! Sirius Orion Black, ten points from Gryffindor. You hear me? That's **ten** this time. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"No," Sirius spat, teeth bloody, and all he could think was that it had been worth it. Totally worth it, because McGonagall was a lovely old bint and he'd take her over mummy-dearest any damn day. At least she didn't use _Cruciatus_.

Fluttering his eyelashes, Sirius grinned. "I'd like a kiss, though."

"Make that **fifteen**."

Sirius didn't calm down—he couldn't when it was about _her_ —but he and Prongs made up pretty quick, like they always did, and by the end of the week they found themselves sitting on the Quidditch stands together, staring out at nothing. James was captain that year, and Sirius was a beater. Clobbering balls with clubs really, really helped with his anger issues, and he was angry all the time, except when he thought about her.

"Why do you like her so much?" Prongs asked, clearly confused. All Sirius could do was look down at his lap and thread his hands together, to try and hide the trembling. It was a mess, such a mess, and he didn't know how to tell them. He didn't know how to say that when he'd first met her in the hall, she'd already been scared; all too-big books and thick black robes, looking small and strangely _shrunken_.

She'd moved with a slight shake to her limbs that Sirius had instantly recognized, because when mother-dearest had been at her worst unforgivables were her favourite. Hermione hadn't looked him in the eye when they'd met. She'd tried to huddle up, and in the beginning all he'd seen was the shakes until he bent down. Then he'd realized she'd had on a _Not Notice Me_ charm, and oh Merlin, she'd been really, really pretty, too, with big brown eyes and delicate bones and honeyed curls that bounced when she walked. He'd desperately wanted to reach out and touch her.

Sirius hadn't understood why Hermione was hiding. Why the girl was hiding **anything** , really, because he'd seen her in class and the witch was devastatingly smart. _Hermione_ , she'd said, _my name is Hermione Granger_ , and he'd related to her limp and her shakes so hard he was absolutely wrecked. After she'd fled from the hall, Sirius had written down her name on a slip of paper and kept it close to his heart, because a wisp; she reminded him of a wisp, and he was terrified she was going to disappear like one too. He was on the verge of having nightmares about it.

Sirius wanted to tell Prongs about this. He wanted to confide in him how desperate he was, and just how much his insides hurt. But they didn't know, and they couldn't; they didn't have the shakes or the brittle-bone sort of way a person carried themselves after something like that. He was pretty sure there was something wrong with Hermione's arm too, 'cuz she seemed to be favoring it, but that was her secret. Her secret to keep, and Sirius' to keep safe. They wouldn't understand her, not like him, and Merlin, Merlin help him, he liked her so much. The words were stuck in his throat, and he was gasping.

James sat beside him, watching him struggle; he sighed really loud, then slapped his hand companionably across Sirius' back, looking out across the pitch. Tomorrow they'd be holding tryouts.

"You really like her, don't you?"

"Nice," Sirius gasped through gritted teeth, his hands clenched so tightly together his knuckles popped. The panic was coming back, strong and thick. It was a cage, and he was trapped in it. _Don't think about it,_ he told himself. _Think about her._ "You, you gotta be **nice** —"

"We will," James assured him, but there was a slight edge of worry to his tone. The setting autumn sun was glinting off the brassy rim of his glasses. "But shite, you sure you're alright Padfoot? I've never seen you—"

"I'm fine," he bit out. He definitely wasn't.

"Yeah, sure you are."

Sirius refused to tell James that he was right. Priorities: he had them.

* * *

Potions was his favourite class now. It was his favourite class because **she** was in it, and Sirius had never tried to be so well behaved in all his life.

"Where is Sirius Black and what have you done with him?" Remus demanded as they set up their supplies. It was warm day that morning, even in the dungeons: unsually tepid, almost, as outside the sky had been dark and overcast. There was a soft smile on Remus' face as he placed his mortar and pestle on a nearby desk, but he'd only been halfway joking in his remark.

Sirius ignored him, jealously hoarding the empty seat next to his as he kept a frantic eye on the door.

He knew Hermione's schedule by now, or what he could through creeping: through spending his nights watching her move furtively about the school on the Marauder's Map. Lily had told him to stop stalking her—"seriously Sirius, just give it a rest, she's clearly not interested"—and eventually James had been forced to step in, because he'd gone from bad to worse in a matter of days and honest to Merlin he was an absolute mess.

It was puppy love; the worst sort of puppy love, because Hermione Granger was obviously not buying it, and he was a goddamn Black. Maybe she didn't like Pure-bloods, he'd thought at first—a lot of witches hated the rules and regulations that came along with it—but by the end of the week it became clear that she just didn't care. The knowledge of this made Sirius simultaneously giddy with hope and absolutely wrecked with sadness. Every morning he woke up early, trying to find time to talk to her, but either he slept in too late or she just never made it downstairs. When Hermione **did** arrive for breakfast in the Great Hall, she always made sure to hide behind her books. Sirius had tried sitting next to her once, and she'd all but choked; he'd offered her Butterbeer to help with the choking, and when she'd taken the glass from him, whispering _thanks_ , her hand had been trembling. Sirius' hand had been trembling too.

Hermione never watched Quidditch, or sat in the stands with the rest of the girls; she spent most of her time in the library, but Sirius had been banned from there after knocking over six whole shelves in a furious attempt to hex Snivellus. At night Granger always wandered through the castle, this way and that. More than once she'd ventured into the Forbidden Forest, but Sirius hadn't snitched on her yet. Partially he kept his peace because he was deathly curious, but mostly it was because he was terrified of her getting hurt. She had the shakes and the brittleness, the dark circles around her eyes. He knew she was _fragile_ , physically, at least. Merlin, if anyone tried to hurt her he'd burn the whole thing down. He hated his mother, but Sirius was Walburga's son in all but intent. He was lucky Narcissa was no longer in school, because the witch would have noticed his mood swings and snitched on him.

"Alright students, take out your textbooks." Professor Slughorn said, waddling along in his heavy silk robes towards the front of the class.

Sirius shot a panicked look at the door, his long fingers drumming along the top of his wooden desk. She was late. Merlin, why was she late? She couldn't be late. He'd saved a seat for her.

Hermione was polite and very pretty, but extremely jumpy and terribly withdrawn. It had taken Sirius less than a day to realize she was deathly afraid of talking to others. No one else was looking out for her, so he'd decided to do it himself. That included saving a seat for her. He was going to take care of her, at least until she got settled. The other students didn't understand her nervousness, and the fact that they didn't was driving him mad. The rumors about Hermione's recalcitrant behavior had begun almost immediately, and while some were sympathetic—"poor thing, maybe she lost someone"—others had decided she wasn't a true Gryffindor. It happened sometimes with late year transfers, being sorted into the wrong house.

 _Not true_ , Sirius wanted to scream, _not true at all_ , because he **had** been sorted into the wrong house. Hermione was just walking wounded. She had the bad balance like he'd had; that same sort of brittle-bone thing that he'd been prone to before getting blasted off the family tree. And maybe he liked her because he knew they were similar; a girl just like him, and finally, there was someone he could confide in. Sirius wanted that.

"Ah! Ms. Granger," Professor Slughorn exclaimed jovially, his green silk robes whispering along the cool stone floor. Like a bobble-headed doll Sirius immediately turned towards the door, twisting all the way around in his seat.

Behind him James sighed. Remus put his head in hands, and Peter looked bored. Lily gave him an icy glare, her hand clenching tightly around the base of her wand. She was mad at him again.

"Glad you could make it," Slughorn was saying in that slightly touched, genial way of his. He beckoned Hermione forward with an expansive wave of his age spotted hand. The other fiddled with the brass pocket watch nestled comfortably in the front of his waistcoat. "Please, find a seat and partner up. I was just about to start the lesson."

"I'm sorry Professor," Hermione said. Sirius just stared at her, drunk on the sight. Her small figure stood forlornly in the doorway, nearly drowning in robes; the way she kept her head down and gaze averted was definitely alarming, and Sirius wanted to get up and help her, but he didn't, so all he did was stare. He kept on staring until Lily elbowed James in the side, clearing her throat in that _do-something-about-him_ sort of way.

James didn't at first, but when Lily began digging the base of her wand into her desk, he sighed and leaned forward, smacking Sirius upside the head. It broke his concentration. Sirius reared back in alarm, blinking hard.

"Desperate," James mouthed with a grin on his face. "Really desperate."

Across the row, Parkinson—a Slytherin Prefect, all slinky brown hair with a full bottom lip—gave him a glare. Sirius pointedly ignored her.

It hadn't been long since he'd been with Parkinson last: literally an hour before meeting Hermione on the first day of school, all tangled up in each other's arms in his favorite first-floor broom closet. If Sirius thought hard enough, he could still feel her skin; he could still taste her full bottom lip between his teeth, smooth like rum, but he didn't like rum now. He wanted honey. Hermione's curls looked like caramel in the light. Merlin, he'd go for anything sweet. He wasn't picky.

A soft murmur of snickers that went through the class; a barely whispered "look at Black." In the doorway Hermione just stood there, lowering her head. She looked miserable. Sirius glared at the ones who were snickering. Even though they quieted down right quick, Lily kept on glaring at him. She'd always had it in for him because of Snivellus, and Sirius knew that she thought he was up to no good. He usually **was** up to no good, but this time it was different.

"Running late, between classes—" Hermione was mumbling. Slughorn chortled good-naturedly and waved her forward, his chipmunk cheeks rosy with exertion.

"It's alright my dear. Come, we must get to today's lessons. Now, let's find you—ah! Sirius, my boy. I see you have an empty spot next to you, and no partner yet. Well, what a surprise. Come now, Ms. Granger. Please take a seat next to Mr. Black."

From where he was sitting, Sirius saw Hermione visibly wilt; he saw her shoulders sink and her limbs tremble, and felt something brittle inside of him crack. He didn't like rejection. He didn't like being tossed aside. Not her, never her, she was different, she **had** to be different—

James caught the wilting too. His friend sent him a sympathetic glance. Sirius just grit his jaw and tried to ignore him. Hermione was uncomfortable around him, and even more uncomfortable around his friends. It had to be his last name—someone had told her something about him—but he was going to make it up to her. She was hurting, and he was going to make things right. Even if he felt like shite while doing it.

Like she was weighed down by a thousand pounds of proverbial baggage, Sirius watched as Hermione awkwardly re-shouldered her bag to walk down the aisle. She moved quietly without looking up. As she neared their desk, Sirius shuffled further back so she'd have some more room, but as she drew close he noticed how her balance seemed to be more off than usual; how she was carrying all her books and her bag on one arm, the other held stiff and close to her chest.

No one seemed to notice the discomfort besides him, but Sirius saw everything, and what he saw make him ill. He almost got up to help her then—nearly scrambled out of his seat to take her books and her school bag, to lessen the weight—but from the way that she tensed it was clear that she was already anxious, so he remained where he was; twitching and shuffling, his blunt fingernails digging into the wood on his desk. Merlin, how he wanted to reach out and touch her. He'd do anything.

Sirius tried not to stare at her too hard as Hermione slid into the seat beside him; he tried to act as nonchalantly as possible, but when she almost dropped her books he finally moved. Muttering a quick "here," he shifted forward, quickly stopping their downwards tumble before stacking the textbooks on the desk.

Hermione stood beside him, letting out a shuddering breath as she slowly slid her school bag off her good shoulder. Her gaze seemed to be focused on his hands.

"Thank you, Sirius," she said. Her tone remained soft and reserved.

Sirius felt his heart clench in a spasm, because it was too small to contain the feeling that was building within. Always, Hermione said his name with a strange sort of familiarity—a distant kind of warmth—and she'd never forgotten it. Not once. Sirius swallowed and nodded his head, but he said nothing more because he didn't trust himself to speak. He'd known her for less than two weeks, but already he adored her. James was right. He had it bad. Merlin, he was done for.

"Alright class, get out your brass scales and cauldrons! We're making _Essence of Lethe_ today—very dangerous if you add the wrong amount of poppy, so make sure you watch your partner. We don't want anyone getting hurt now, do we?"

The class filled with the sound of students pulling out their supplies, the clatter of cutting utensils and cauldrons; the soft _swiff_ of fingers flipping through paper to the appropriate page in their books. Remus and Peter were working together, and Lily was concentrating. James, not so much. Sirius had watched Hermione like a hawk all week, but he'd never worked with her until now. He was so nervous his mouth was dry; he'd never been this nervous around a girl before.

"Can you set up the cauldron?" Hermione asked quietly. Sirius felt the air leave him in a rush. He was shite at measuring and shite at behaving, but he could totally handle physical tasks. The only reason he had taken Potions was because Lily had wanted to, so James had wanted to, and the Marauders did everything together.

"You're smart, Mr. Black." Professor McGonagall had told him at the end of fifth year, in what now seemed like a lifetime ago. Her expression had been somewhat sad. The witch had delicately dropped his O.W.L results onto her wooden desk, the aging paper scribbled with _E's_ and _O's._

Sirius had clenched his jaw and slumped in his chair, looking despondently out the window.

"You're **incredibly** smart, but you never apply yourself. You're aimless." Sirius was a lot of things in life, and _disappointment_ was definitely one of them.

He set up the cauldron. Hermione went to the front of the class and grabbed some St. John's Wort and essence of Rosewater, returning to their desk and laying the shriveled yellow blossoms out in a row. Her face was hidden by her hair as she bent over her textbook, her fingers nearly as pale as the paper as she flipped through the pages. Hermione was short, but not tiny; small enough that Sirius could see clear over the top of her head, the crown of hers coming up to his shoulder, but no more.

For a second he just stood there, lost in dreamland as he wondered what it would feel like to hold her. He was rudely jolted out of his thoughts when he saw her reach into her bag and pull out her wand. It was curving, dark thing, and strangely wicked looking.

Sirius blinked, doing a double take at the familiarity of it all, then felt a bit of bile rise in his mouth. The wand was almost a mirror image of Bella's.

"That your wand?" he asked. Hermione stiffened; her shoulders grew tight as she nodded mutely, reaching into her seemingly endless bag to grab more supplies. Sirius didn't know why, but he didn't like it. Not one bit. It didn't suit her, the wand—it looked too _Black-_ like, and cruel. Merlin, he **did** love imaging his last name as hers, but something about the situation seemed off. It made him feel all twisted inside.

"It looks like my cousin's," Sirius said without really thinking it through, then added "Bellatrix, that is. She graduated before I came here." Another pause. "She's a bitch."

"Isn't that the truth," James piped up. Remus grinned, and Peter gave a nervous smile.

"Language!" snapped Lily.

"What?! It's true."

Hermione abruptly dropped her supplies.

The mortar and pestle she'd been removing from her bag tumbled from nerveless fingers, a shock like a spasm running along her back. Sirius quickly darted forward, grabbing the mortar before it fell to the floor. It had to be her bad arm, he thought; she'd been holding the mortar with that. It must have been causing her a world of pain, because he'd never seen her look so shaken.

Hermione was frozen, her fingers curled stiffly as she blinked owlishly at nothing. This close—so close he could almost rest his head against hers—she smelt like pine needles. Like fir trees and mulch and the dampness that was endemic to the Forbidden Forest. Sirius knew she'd been out there again, but he didn't comment on it. Not in public. He wanted to ask her about her arm, though; maybe if he knew what was bothering her, he could filch some pain potions from the infirmary. Leaning back to give her a little more space, Sirius set the mortar and pestle on the desk with a _clack_. Hermione remained alarmingly pale.

"Thank you," she said quietly, not looking his way. Even though he knew it wasn't the time, Sirius began wondering what he could do to get a thank you _kiss_ instead. Her lips looked so soft, and he couldn't help it.

"No problem, Luv," he said, and she swayed on her feet. They didn't talk about the wand again. Sirius just kind of forgot about it.

The first part of Potions class went well enough. Hermione was reserved and definitely skittish, but incredibly efficient and smart. Without seeming to realize it, she began dolling out instructions to him in that quiet, semi-distracted way of hers, and Sirius just followed like a clockwork golem, desperately eager to please and simply happy to be around her.

It was almost uncanny, how she managed to handle him; she didn't look at him, or interact much at all, but Hermione seemed to know exactly what to say in order to calm him down. They worked well together, or at least Sirius thought so. He wished he had more classes with her.

"How are you liking Hogwarts?" he asked as he de-headed the poppies, before chopping them in half with a careful _shick_ of the knife. The pieces were the perfect length on all sides, his workstation fastidiously neat.

"Huh?" Hermione said, looking up from stirring the potion. Sirius knew it had been an accident, because almost immediately she looked away. He tried to tamper down the hurt. He didn't understand why she was so uncomfortable around him.

"You finding everything alright?" he explained again.

"Yes," she said, nodding once. Her tone was soft but definitely distracted, and he got the distinct impression that she was thinking of something else. Sirius watched the way Hermione learned over the cauldron, her light brown curls tumbled down her back and across her shoulders. Her eyes were big and brown like a doe's.

"Do you like Quidditch?" he asked, searching for a safe topic to break the silence. Hermione was still paying attention to him, but he wanted her **undivided** attention; he was desperate to talk to her but scared of it too, because he was self-aware enough to realize their connection was fragile.

The witch didn't pause with her clockwise stirring, leaning further over the pot. The potion inside was thick and viscous and the color of puce. Sirius leaned closer, ostensibly to take a look, but mostly in the hopes of coping a feel. Hermione was perfect; perfect at everything, really, but at the moment he thought she was the perfect size for holding. His mind was desperately racing for an excuse to touch her.

"Not really," said Hermione. "I'm no good with a broom." Her voice jolted him back to reality, and it was only then that Sirius remembered what he'd asked. She didn't look at him, but he could hear the pang of sadness to her voice. His stomach dropped because of it.

"Are you afraid of heights?"

From where he was standing—half backed away, half leaning over her—Sirius could see her lips twist into an uncomfortable grimace.

"There are worse things to be—" Hermione began, then abruptly stopped. She visibly hunched in on herself, her gaze growing distant and dull. Sirius felt like shite. He **was** shite, and where were his bloody manners; he shouldn't have said something like that, especially when she had the shakes.

"I can take you up, if you want," he offered.

"Up where?"

"On the broom, help you get used to it. I'm on the Quidditch team." He let out a laugh. "I swear I won't drop you." He'd hold on to her forever.

"Thank you, Sirius," Hermione said softly. "That's so kind of you."

And just like that, Sirius was floating.

He was in a dreamland utopia, the proverbial cloud nine. She'd called him _kind,_ and he wanted to kiss her, right there in class. Sirius hated his name, but he loved how she said it, as if they were the oldest of friends and they'd known each other for years.

He was so deep in fantasy-land that he didn't notice her shifting—not until he felt her shoulder bump against the front of his chest. Sirius looked down, then saw how she flinched. He quickly stepped back, but Hermione move faster, nervously scooting out from behind their desk.

"Can you watch the pot for me?" she asked, not looking up. "I just need to get something from the front." Sirius nodded immediately, but already Hermione was stepping away and making her way towards the far end of the class. Sirius kept watch on the cauldron as best as he was able, but he was already distracted by the flitting way that she walked. It was only with a _whack_ to his head from Remus that he managed to remember that he was making a potion. Sirius stirred it just in time to keep it from boiling over.

"Never," Remus said, and his tone was thick with amusement. " **Never** going to hear the end of this."

"Sod off."

James cackled. Across the aisle, Parkinson bit her full bottom lip and brought down her knife on the poppies with a _thwack_.

Hermione was taking awhile to return to her seat. She seemed to be a fastidious sort of person however, and Slughorn had taken an interest in her on account of her intelligence, so Sirius paid it no mind. When he heard the Professor's daft chortling erupt from the front of the class, along with an ecstatic "wonderful, my dear!" he went back to stirring their pot. He didn't really pay attention to what Slughorn was saying, and soon he'd managed to tune out the wizard's babbling, letting it fade into background noise.

Hermione would be back soon. She would be back, and then she would be standing close enough for him to smell her hair. Maybe he could even touch her hand. Sirius was thinking of asking Hermione out to Hogsmeade that weekend. He hadn't been kidding about the broom bit, and he really wanted to try it now, just to see if he could make her smile.

He was rudely awoken from daydreaming by someone jabbing him in the back. Again. That time Sirius slammed his wand down on the desk, gripping the ledge of his seat and turning all the way around as he glared with a distinctive lack of amusement towards his friends.

" **What**?" he snapped, loud enough for the other students to hear. Even as he turned around James began frantically gesturing towards the far left side of the room.

"Look! Look!" he was mouthing. Beside his best friend, Lily's face was a perfect picture of distress. "Look! Snivellus."

 _Ah_. That was why Lily was so upset. A sneer automatically tilted his lips and Sirius turned, only to feel his leer abruptly fall away to be replaced by shock.

Hermione Granger was talking to Severus Snape.

The two of them were standing not that far from each other, with Snivellus behind his desk, all hunchbacked and leering. Hermione on the other side, clutching a handful of herbs as she stared towards the floor. Sirius couldn't hear what they were saying over the hustle and bustle in the classroom, but from the gentle expression on Hermione's face the conversation didn't seem to be one that was forced.

Snivellus tilted his head to the side, his stringy black hair falling across his forehead. He was staring at the witch with what might have almost passed for fascinated revulsion. Sirius looked to Hermione, then looked to their teacher, desperately hoping that what he was seeing was some sort of lie. Slughorn, the doddering old fool, was talking to another girl. A sick feeling crawled its way up his throat, and when he turned back, Sirius was hit with the taste of bile on his tongue.

He watched the way that Hermione stood there, angling herself towards Severus Snape; he saw the way that she talked to him, looking down and tucking her hair behind her ear. He could tell Snivellus was saying something nasty—his mouth was moving too quickly, his lips forming in a cruel sneer—but he couldn't make out the words. Automatically Sirius took a step forward, intending to stop him, because how dare that grease-ball talk to Hermione Granger. How dare he be cruel to her.

But then Hermione seemed to respond, just as quick. Although Sirius couldn't hear what they were saying, Snivellus didn't sneer again. His expression fell into something neutral.

Merlin take him, he **liked** her.

It was a sham; a travesty of epic proportions. A terribly play where he was watching Beauty and the Beast cavorting about. Hermione was being careful not to look Snivellus in the eye, and she wasn't letting him touch her, but the rage. The rage was bubbling in Sirius' throat, hot and thick and stinging like mother-dearest's unforgivables. He couldn't bear it. Not again. His hand was burning and his heart was pounding so fast it felt like everything would explode. There was a voice in his head, cackling like Bella, and _oh_ , Sirius though. Oh, _oh_ , _oh,_ this is what it had felt like for James with Lily. No wonder he'd been so angry. No **wonder**.

"Sirius! Your hand!" Remus hissed, but Sirius wasn't breathing properly now. In and out his shaky gasps went, but in and out much too rapidly, his vision dissolving into spots. It was glass. Glass cutting into his skin at the sight of seeing them together, acid burning his throat. He hated them. He hated her, how could she leave him—

Sirius didn't realize something was wrong until there was another chorus of "your hand!" Then Remus was reaching across the aisle to shake him out of it, just as his potion bubbled over.

There was puce. Dark, viscous fluid absolutely everywhere, bubbling and popping across the desk before trailing messily onto the floor. Hermione looked over just as their spilt potion made a loud _pop._ Bits of it went flying upwards to smack against the ceiling, before dripping down into clumps of unrecognizable goop on the tiles.

A chorus of nervous laughter followed, along with startled gasps of surprise. Sirius' hand was bleeding along the underside of it from where he'd dug his hand into the sharp edge of the seat.

"Goodness, Mr. Black!" Slughorn exclaimed from the front of the class, both of his pudgy hands coming to rest on the front of waistcoat. "Whatever happened to your potion?" His expression was one of alarm.

Even as he spoke, Hermione began striding over. Sirius was too upset to pay attention to her.

"Sorry Professor," he bit out, leaning unsteadily backwards and letting go of his chair. He clenched his hands into fists, but he could still feel the blood dripping out between his fingers. "I lost track." It was all he could do not to fly into a fit of rage; his jaw set so tight his teeth nearly cracked. Why? Why was he being rejected for someone like _Snivellus?_ Sirius was no good with rejection, he hated rejection, and Hermione, Hermione with **Snape** —

"No matter, my dear boy." Slughorn said, quite congenially. "Just clean up the mess, and start again."

Remus and Peter gave him sympathetic glances. Sirius just stared at his desk, fumbling around for his wand to perform a quick _Scourgify._ He hated potions. He should have told James to shove it when they'd all agreed to take it, and Hermione—

Sirius felt a pressure on his arm, ever so light. It wasn't until he caught a whiff of pine needles that he realized that Hermione was back and standing right next to him. Her bad hand was on his arm, barely a presence through the thick fabric of his robes, but all of a sudden he was intimately aware of her; from the individual strands of her hair to the way the low light of the dungeon glanced off the shallow bridge of her nose. Her gaze was still averted, a collection herbs clutched in her free hand.

"May I?" she asked, all soft and polite. Sirius was still struggling to string one word into the next. When his brain failed to process what she was saying, Hermione re-shifted the supplies in her free hand to keep from dropping them, then nodded with her head to his bleeding palm. "Do you want me to fix it?" she said.

Petulantly, trying to bite down on his anger and mostly failing, Sirius snapped out a nasty "if you want." Almost immediately he regretted it, because Merlin help him Hermione was so sweet, and of **course** she knew nothing about Snivellus. The witch was going to end up hating him. He was being such a Pure-blood prat.

Instead of drawing back, however, Hermione's expression fell into something banal. Without saying much of anything, she magicked away the mess on their desk with a flick of her wand, then awkwardly placed their new supplies down onto the now-clean surface. She reached out and grabbed his hand, her nasty-looking wand held at the ready as she held his palm in hers.

Hermione's hand was soft and smooth, and noticeably smaller than his. Immediately Sirius' brain shut down, because she was touching him. She was touching him **first** , and Merlin she was so pretty and so smart and he was so sorry for snapping at her, and those fingers look at those tiny fingers just look how they moved—

Hermione uncurled his fist and performed a quick healing spell with a swish of her wand. As she did, there was a tingling sensation along his palm. The cut healed up damn-near perfect, and when she was finished she used another _Scourgify_ to get rid of the rest of the blood.

"Does it hurt?" she asked him, still not looking him directly in the eye. Sirius nodded numbly, then nearly had a heart attack when she abruptly re-gripped his hand. She swiped her thumb along the underside of his palm where the cut had been, as if looking for any additional damage. Her expression was thoughtful, her tone inexplicably sad.

"You were never very good at taking care of yourself," she said, barely audible. Sirius still heard it. He then he decided he'd heard wrong, because his brain was short-circuiting and he was unable to make sense of her words.

Hermione dropped her hand and went back to brewing their potion, moving as quickly as before. Sirius just watched her, utterly entranced. _Hermione, Hermione, Hermione_ _Granger._ Her name repeated like a metronome inside his head, and she was all he could think of. Sirius liked her enough to date her for an entire **year**. He was done for.

"Can you help me with the cauldron again?" Hermione asked. She made no mention about Snivellus; no remark about how Sirius had ruined their assignment for the day. Her face was exceedingly pale though, and she seemed a bit unsteady, which was enough to knock him out of his day-dreaming. Fully contrite, and feeling rather horrible for being so spiteful, Sirius nodded mutely, stepping forward to help her.

The second time they made the potion the process was much smoother than before. Hermione worked quickly, and by the end of the class they had a brand new _Essence of Lethe_ ; gleaming and dark and tucked away inside a glass phial, which they handed in for marking. Slughorn grinned when they did.

"Splendid, Ms. Granger, Mr. Black! Absolutely splendid!" Declared their Professor, but Sirius didn't care one whit. It wasn't until after class—when Hermione had uttered a quick goodbye and all but fled from his presence, that Sirius realized the itching sensation he'd felt down his spine when she'd healed him was unnerving familiar. It was almost identical to the feeling he got when Bellatrix was trying to hex him.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

Thank you to everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed! I'm glad you're all enjoying the story so far. Side note: I've fixed up some spelling errors in Chapter 1, but nothing major.


	3. Keep Your Kills

**A/N:** Chapter revised October 23, 2017.

Chapter III: Keep Your Kills

* * *

Sirius Black had a temper, it seemed.

It didn't take Hermione long to come to this conclusion—somewhere between Sirius getting into a hexing war with a seventh-year Slytherin and slugging Harry's father across the face—but when she did realize it, she felt inordinately relieved. It was a morbid thing, really. His anger was obviously holding him back, and the more she watched the more Hermione could see how frayed his nerves were; how impulsive and dangerously nihilistic he was, but it was a _link_. A link to the life she was no longer living, and never going to get the chance to live again. Hermione's hold on things was… tenuous, these days. Sirius' moods swings helped to ground her. They reminded her of what she was fighting for in a roundabout way; of the people she'd left behind. Of the people that had died in the interim, like Harry.

In her time, Hermione remembered Sirius as twitching, sallow-faced man who should've been a Pure-blood supremacist. Sirius Black should have been a Death Eater, given his uncomfortable tendency to act like Bellatrix, but he'd ended up hating his family and turning his anger onto the people who had raised him instead. Absolutely wild he'd been after he'd gotten out of Azkaban, and Hermione could see traces of it, even now. The boy could go from perfect-prince-with-a-cocksure-grin to snarling brawler in two seconds flat, and he was absolutely vicious when it came to dueling; a raging powerhouse that had a habit of prowling the halls like some sort of animal.

Hermione found herself worried about him in an abstract sort of way, as she could see the train wreck that was about to occur. Still, she felt disinclined to interfere. Affectionate but feral, Sirius Black was. It wasn't a healthy mindset for him to inhabit, but he was predictable in his intensity, and she needed that, at least from a distance. His animagus form suited him well. The memory of his wild edges calmed her.

Hermione had determined to stay clear of Sirius—she had bigger concerns at the moment—but the Pure-blood heir was contrary to a fault and it seemed like he had other ideas. Black was many things, and tenacious was one of them. While the original timeline would have been buggered no matter what she'd done—Hermione had prepared for this eventuality—she hadn't planned on things going so far south, so quickly. Sirius was always underfoot. Always lurking around corners, and never far from sight. And while Hermione had resigned herself to their inevitable proximity sometime around the second week—they had DADA and Potions together, and were in the same house and the same year—she was still trying to figure out what she'd done to attract his attention.

She was a nobody here, or at least she should have been. Hermione had purposely gone out of her way to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, and with how nervous she'd been lately—with how tired she was—it hadn't been that hard at all. She wore _Not Notice Me_ charms and nondescript robes, and stayed quiet during class in a herculean effort to just blend. No one should have cared about a muggle-born witch named Granger.

This had worked on most people, but Sirius Orion Black was not _most people,_ and he had apparently decided _no, not today._ He was sticking to her like glue, and for the life of her Hermione didn't know why he was, or how to dissuade him. She did take comfort in his presence, because despite the unhinged anger that surrounded him like a cloud, Sirius was always sweet on her. He was always kind in that awkward, fish-out-of-water sort of way—like being genuinely nice was new for him—and when she let herself relax, Hermione could imagine them being friends. She didn't have any friends here, and she was desperately lonely because of it.

Unfortunately for her, his constant hovering was making it difficult to complete her task. The eldest son to the House of Black was simply a distraction, and Hermione had no time for those, so she pushed the idea of _friends_ to the back of her mind. She forgot about it, even though it hurt while doing so.

At night, Bellatrix would come to her. She would twine her way around Hermione's limbs in plumes of smoke, her skeletal fingers drumming against her skin.

"Poppet," Bella would croon against her throat, the witch's curls intermingling with hers. The dreams would always start the same, with Hermione standing in the middle of the Gryffindor dormitory, dressed in nothing but her thick white nightgown with the too-long sleeves, staring towards the open window as Bellatrix wrapped around her like a second layer of flesh. The dreams were so vivid that Hermione began to wonder if she was hallucinating, because she was able to see and hear and smell and touch **everything** , only she was paralyzed. She couldn't move. It was terrifying. Being helpless usually was.

"Poppet, why are we still here?" Bella would ask. "We need to find Cissy."

When the paralysis ended—which it always did—Hermione would simply crawl into bed and curl into a ball in an attempt to ignore her, except the witch would clamber across the covers and settle down in a pile of ink behind her instead. Bellatrix would rest her bony cheek on her shoulder, running her fingers against her arm. The mad matriarch of House Lestrange felt so real, and if this was a dream—which it had to be—it was lucid.

"Poppet," Bella complained, dancing those fingers along her ribs like spider's legs as she curled behind Hermione and wrapped her too-real limbs around her waist. "Filthy little poppet. Why are we still here? This is the wrong house."

Hermione bit down on her bottom lip to keep herself from screaming; to keep herself from speaking back to what she was desperately hoping was nothing more than a figment of her mind. It was so hard to tell if she was dreaming or awake most days, and going back in time had made the apparitions worse. Hermione wondered if it was because Bellatrix was still alive here.

"No," the witch thrummed in answer to her unspoken question. Hermione felt the inkblot of her nightmares wrap around her even further. Fingers smoothed back tangled curls as another hand wrapped around her damaged arm, the one that constantly oozed and bled. "No, it's not **that**."

There was a cackle building in her throat. Hermione could hear it. Bellatrix planted a sisterly kiss against her cheek. Hermione bit down on her tongue. She shut her eyes, feeling the wetness of tears leak out from underneath. Merlin save her, this was just a dream. Thank Merlin this was just a dream, and Bellatrix wasn't really there to see her crying. Sirius had been bad enough.

"Why are you letting him near us, poppet?" Bellatrix asked the second she thought of Sirius' name. The Death Eater sounded so disappointed, and comically hurt. Bella's fingers continued to trail up and down Hermione's rib cage, her broken nails snagging stray threads of fabric from the nightgown. "I see him watching us. Always watching you, that filthy little traitor. Dirty little Black. He's no good for you, poppet. No good for **us**. A stain on this house. Cissy is much better. She'll take care of you, I promise."

Bellatrix Lestrange was always going on about Sirius Black: always cursing her baby cousin and hissing threats whenever he so much as stepped into a room. Sometimes—when Sirius' hand would accidentally brush against Hermione's, or he'd lose his balance and lean in too close by mistake—the apparition would start screaming. Sirius didn't mean to touch her, of course, but that didn't matter to Bellatrix. Potions class was the worst because of their proximity. For three weeks now, Hermione had ended up seated beside him. The mad matriarch of House Lestrange was going rabid just watching them.

"He recognizes it," Hermione said without meaning to. She didn't want to speak, but she felt compelled to all the same. "He recognizes your wand."

Bellatrix chuckled behind her; Hermione felt the witch dissolve into mist, wrapping around her like a blanket of death. Ghostly fingers ran soothingly through her hair, before becoming solid again. The rest stayed aimless. Ethereal, akin to a Dementor.

"I'm glad you kept it," Bella confessed. Hermione wasn't. Dawn was rising in her dream, the first vestiges of light peeking out from beyond the tree line of the Forbidden Forest. Slowly the sky lightened to a washed out grey as a cool breeze drifted in from the open window. The chill autumn wind rustled the curtains, and Hermione shivered. It felt so real, this waking-nightmare. It felt like it wasn't a dream.

In the bed next to hers, one of the girls groaned and shifted in her sleep. Rising from her mattress ever so slightly, she reached forward from behind her half-drawn curtains, fumbling around for her wand as her eyes remained swollen with sleep. Abigail, the girl's name was, and after her slim fingers closed around the end of her wand, she waved it clumsily towards the window, making it close with a _clack._

Hermione watched as the girl dropped back onto her pillow like a sack of potatoes, bleary-eyed and sleepy. Abigail rubbed blond hair out of her eyes, before she turned to Hermione, staring at her in a trance.

"Who are you talking to, Granger?" she asked.

It was at that moment that Hermione realized that this wasn't a dream. That she was always tired because she was still awake, and a thought occurred to her; that she'd only **imagined** crawling into bed after exploring the Forbidden Forest for weeks on end. That maybe she never really slept in the first place. Behind her Bellatrix hummed, petting her hair and planting another sisterly kiss against her cheek.

"Nobody," Hermione said softly as she fought not to cry. She clenched her hands into the covers and prayed to Merlin that the other girl was too tired to see the sheen of tears on her face. "I'm talking to nobody at all."

"Oh," Abigail said, sounding tired and befuddled and just the slightest bit sad. "Alright." She yawned again, turning her face into the pillow and pushing her hands beneath it as she prepared to go back to sleep. "You should sit with us in the Great Hall for breakfast. In the morning. I think… I think you'd like it."

"Alright," Hermione whispered, her hands trembling against the bed covers. She didn't know what else to say. Behind her, Bellatrix cackled.

 _Faster_ , Hermione decided. She needed to work **faster**. She couldn't take much more of this.

* * *

Her arm was in agony when she got up that morning. The pain bordered on exquisite, so intense was the ache. Hermione accidentally bumped it against her chest-of-drawers as she fumbled out of bed, and when she did she gasped for air and falling to her knees; gripping her bedpost as she saw stars. Her arm had never hurt this bad before. Merlin, what was wrong with her?

"Are you alright?" Abigail asked as she stood by the window, buttoning up her starch-pressed shirt. The girl wasn't an early riser, but she was a quick dresser; very proficient, and she'd already gotten up and showered in the ten minutes that it had taken Hermione and the others to drag themselves out of bed.

There were three other girls in her seventh year dormitory, including Abigail, and Hermione was beyond thankful that Lily Evans wasn't one of them. The girl was nice but far too smart; Hermione had seen the way the other witch was watching her arm when she thought that Hermione wasn't looking. She was also Harry's mother, and she had his eyes. Hermione couldn't bear the thought of looking at her and seeing the-boy-who-didn't-live staring back. She'd failed him.

Mutely, trying to draw breath through her teeth so she wouldn't scream—and gripping the bedpost like her life depended on it—Hermione nodded. She forced herself to smile, however uncomfortable that smile might have been.

"I'm fine," she whispered. "Just cramps in the leg. I think I slept on it wrong."

Abigail made a clucking sound of understanding as she finished doing up the last button on her blouse. Afterwards, she reached for her gold and red tie on the bed. Her slate grey sweater was resting on the covers behind her, folded into a neat little pile. Around them the other girls were heading to the showers, their personal supplies slung over their arms or carried in small cloth sacks. One of them glanced at Hermione with an expression that might have passed as pity, but otherwise they paid her no mind. Hermione was always slow in the mornings—a far cry from what she'd been like before—but by now most of the seventh years had gotten used to it. Hermione always waited until everyone else was done in the showers before she used them herself, so there was absolutely no risk of anyone seeing her injury. Sometimes she was too tired to remember to glamour it.

"Do you want me to fix it?" Abigail said, reaching for her wand. Hermione's heart lurched in her throat, her legs nearly giving way again before she remembered that Abigail was talking about the **cramps** , and not the curse.

"I'm training to be a Healer, you know," Abigail said, picking her wand up off her bed and holding it to the ready. Her expression was bright, her blue eyes animated. "I want to work at St. Mungo's after I graduate. My brother Charlie says they're understaffed. He works there too, in the long-term ward."

Without meaning to Hermione thought of George. She thought of Ginny Weasley and sleepless nights; of quiet conversations in the back rooms of book shops, of Harry and Ron and the aftereffects of the war. Merlin, the fact that she'd never see them again hurt worse than her arm. Mutely, Hermione shook her head and gripped the bedpost harder, managing to pull herself up. Her knees knocked together beneath her nightgown. She tried to will herself not to clutch her injured arm close to her chest, but it hurt too much to ignore. She couldn't help it.

"No," she said, giving the girl another watery smile. "It will pass."

Abigail nodded and didn't press the subject. "Are you still joining us for breakfast?" she asked, briefly putting down her wand to pull her sweater vest over her head. She donned her robe after that, sliding the heavy black garment across her shoulders and slipping her arms through the sleeves.

"I might be late," Hermione said, hoping her tardiness would be a good enough excuse to get out of the engagement, but Abigail was unperturbed. The witch reached up, pulling her long blond hair away the collar, before grabbing her wand off the bed. Hermione watched as the girl slipped the switch of willow into her pocket, then turned her gaze towards the floor.

"That's fine," Abigail said, blunt and brutally honest. The girl was just like that, Hermione was beginning to learn. "We'll wait for you in the common room. Honestly, it's a bit unfair how no one talks to you. Sometimes they walk right past you as if you weren't there."

"I don't mind," Hermione insisted. She couldn't even summon up a shaky smile this time. She'd **purposely** tried to make people walk past her, but it wasn't working. First Sirius, and now Abigail too. What was wrong with her? Were her spells not strong enough? Was this _flaw_ being caused by her arm, too?

"Suit yourself," Abigail said, closing her robe along the front. She leaned down, grabbing her satchel of books off the floor. "Fifteen minutes, then? I'll introduce you to the others."

"Alright."

"Fantastic. See you there, then. Remember, we have Transfiguration today."

"Of course."

Abigail nodded, then left.

When Abigail and the other girls cleared out of the room, Hermione collapsed into a heap on her cot, curling around her arm. She could feel the oozing stickiness of something beneath the fabric, and her nightgown was beginning to look just the slightest bit discolored. She hated pain. It was so hard to think through the ache, and such a distraction. Sometimes she wondering if it would be best if she simply amputated the limb, but as always she was a coward. Just the thought of removing the rotting limb made her queasy.

Tremulously—trying to breathe through her teeth—Hermione reached for her wand. With a slight flick of her hand she used it to levitate her robe, uniform and personal toiletries out of her trunk and onto her bed, followed by a small silver vial that remained unmarked, but contained her daily pain potion. She was only supposed to take half a bottle a day, but desperate times called for desperate measures, so she grasped it and quickly downed the phial in one go.

After emptying the bottle and running a shaking hand across her lips—and once the buzz of the morphine-like high kicked in, enough to dull her senses—Hermione tried to reorder her thoughts. First things first: breakfast with Abigail, then Transfiguration followed by DADA. Her afternoon block was free—thanks to an overly understanding Dumbledore and some hastily spewed lie on needing a lighter course load—and Hermione planned to spend that time in the Restricted Section of the Library, looking for clues. She didn't think she'd find anything there, but she still had to try. Once the evening rolled around it was dinner, followed by another night in the Forbidden Forest as she searched for "the entrance" that Harry had mentioned in his final letter. Despite her numerous setbacks and crumbling self-worth, Hermione was a logical creature. If she planned things out, and compartmentalized, she could get through it. She'd been through worse. The only difference this time was that she didn't have her friends to help her. None of them were here: just the ghosts of her future and the sickly sensation of Bellatrix Lestrange.

Just Bella herself, sitting across from her on Abigail's bed.

"Poppet," she said, cocking her head like a bird and clicking her too-thin fingers against one another. "What's your name? I forget. Time leaves everything behind, like breadcrumbs. I can't find the pieces. Cissy said so."

Gritting her teeth, Hermione swiped a hand across her eyes to get rid of the tears that threatened to fall, banishing thoughts of Bellatrix Lestrange to the back of her mind. She clutched her clothes close to her chest and stood, making her way towards the bathroom. She didn't have time to wait until the others vacated the premises.

Keeping her head low and her eyes trained to the floor, Hermione slipped into a stall at the back of the showers, magicking the curtain shut so it couldn't be accidentally opened from the outside. When she put her clothes on the floor, she made sure to cast a constant drying spell over them so she could keep them with her in the shower stall. Listening to the hiss of water and the chatter of voices, she quickly shucked off her nightgown and started the tap.

The faucet started with a shuddering groan. Hermione gasped, shivering under the sudden deluge of water and curling in on herself as she held her injured arm close to her chest. Droplets of moisture beaded between her eyelashes, dripping off the tip of her nose. When her hair was thoroughly soaked through, she worked up the courage to look at her arm. Hermione's heart sunk when she did so, her fingers curling like overstretched tendons at the beginnings of rigor mortis. Her whole arm wobbled. Everything was a mess.

The _Mudblood_ was still there, oozing and weeping; the lines looked bigger, the flesh bitten deep and splitting apart. The skin around the damaged area was discolored and inflamed, and if she didn't know better Hermione would have thought she was seeing the onset of blood poisoning. Even through the haze of her pain potion, Hermione could feel it. The fact that it was getting worse was cause for alarm, but she knew it was just the curse.

Making a mental note to search the library for tips on how to manage the pain—even though she knew it would be a fruitless endeavor—Hermione quickly finished washing her hair with her good hand and turned off the shower. She muttered a drying spell in an effort to pick up the pace.

Reaching down, Hermione pulled on a fresh pair of underwear and a nondescript bra before she dug around in her bag for a roll of bandages, which she took out and wrapped around her damaged arm with her wand. Her teeth clenched as the linen bandages came into contact with her skin. The arm was so stiff she couldn't use it, and the pain was so bad, even with the potion, that it should have been in a sling. A sling would have just make things more noticeable, however, and she couldn't afford the fuss it would bring. Casting a quick constant _Scourgify_ over the bandage so she wouldn't have to change it until the evening, Hermione began to pull on her skirt and socks.

She was just about to button up her shirt when she heard someone walk into the bathroom, their sharp kitten heels clicking against the tiled floor.

"Granger?" Abigail said, her voice rising over the hiss of steam and the chatter of the other girls' voices. "You almost done?"

Steeling herself for the confrontation, Hermione took a deep breath and poked her head out from behind the shower curtain, giving the other girl a weak, tentative smile. The pain potion was making her feel woozy.

"Yes," she said. She wanted to lie down—she wanted to avoid breakfast in general—but Hermione knew she couldn't afford it. It would look rude. Weird.

Abigail smiled and gave her a quick, perfunctory nod, then turned around and went back into the hall. Hermione re-ducked into her stall, magicking her buttons closed instead. She grabbed her supplies off the floor, scurrying back to her room to drop them off and grab her robe and satchel of books. The over-sized garment was difficult to don, and as Hermione slipped her bad arm through the sleeve the wound throbbed in agony, her fingers curling.

Still wishing for a sling, but knowing it was impossible, Hermione heaved her satchel over her good shoulder and went downstairs, the click of her heels muffled against the thick red carpets. Two other girls from her dorm were waiting for her in the common room when she arrived, along with Abigail. Although Hermione knew that Lily and the Marauders were about, she didn't see them; a fact she was infinitely thankful for.

The Marauders were the _It_ crowd in 1977, and the way the seventh year girls talked about them was with no short measure of awe. Not too long ago—less than a week, by her reckoning—Hermione had come back late in the evening to find the others in her dorm room talking about Sirius in particular. It had been horrible.

"What's up with Black?" one of the girls groaned, falling onto her bed with a _flop_. Hermione had stood just outside the partially opened door preparing to enter, but at the mention of Sirius' surname she'd stopped; her hand braced against the wood as she'd listened with a sinking heart. Being around Sirius was painful, and hearing others talk about him was slightly worse. Sirius was so sweet to her—so incredibly accommodating, whenever they met—that it was agonizing to think about what would happen to him in the future. Hermione didn't like wondering about Sirius more than was necessary, because it made her want to get involved. She didn't have time for that.

"What do you mean?" Abigail asked, looking up from her _Witches of St. Mungo's_ periodical. The first girl began complaining about Sirius going celibate, which never, ever happened. He **never** turned down a quick fling, so the world was ending, and the world was ending because Sirius turning celibate meant that he had a girlfriend. A legitimate one.

"Sirius?" another girl—Delilah—said, detangling her thick black hair with a long-toothed comb. She was dark-skinned and ridiculously pretty, her eyes the most lovely shade of hazel brown. "Sirius Orion Black? **The** Sirius, hitched like James Potter? Gringotts will burn first."

"But it's true!" the girl on the bed whined, turning over onto her stomach as her fingers curled in the bedspread. Hermione had swallowed hard at the thread of the conversation and decided enough was enough. She didn't want to stand there, listening to them discussing Sirius' love life. It felt too strange for her. Too alien. The boy was beautiful—even Hermione could see that—but the man she remembered was old and shattered.

The man she remembered was dead.

"Everyone's saying he has a girlfriend," the girl on the bed groused, her feet swinging in the air. Hermione pressed her hand against the door, pushing inwards. "And I mean **everyone** , you hear? Have you seen him? The way he hangs around that new girl? Merlin, he's fawning—"

Hermione stepped into the room. Immediately a hush fell upon the dormitory, and three sets of eyes had turned to look at her. Three pairs of mouths had snapped shut, their gazes turning distrustful. Immediately Hermione had known that they were talking about him and her. She could put two and two together.

"Sorry," she'd whispered hoarsely, her voice barely audible as she'd slipped into the room. Her eyes smarted with unexpected tears. "Sorry, just grabbing my things." She'd gone over to her trunk and crouched in front of it, reaching inside; blindly grabbing whatever she could in an effort to make herself look busy.

Her hands had settled on books—always trusty, those books—and she'd pulled them close to her chest with her good hand, trying to ignore the stares that continued to linger. She tried to ignore the sick burn of shame that was bubbling to life in her stomach.

Merlin, it wasn't fair.

Hermione had known they weren't trying to be purposefully nasty. She'd known they'd held no ill will, but this was Sirius Black. He wasn't interested in her like that at all. The very act about gossiping about them in such a manner was akin to sullying the name of the man whom Hermione still deeply respected and admired. Current Sirius and future-dead Sirius were not the same _thing_ , but they were the same person. And Hermione remembered a dead man; a man who'd been downright triggered by her presence, who'd never really loved anyone at all, at least not like that.

What a waste of a good life. What a tragedy.

As soon as she'd grabbed her books, Hermione had quickly fled the room and spent the rest of the night huddled away in the restricted section of the library, crying until her eyes were red. She'd tried not to think about the incident since then—she had tried to forget about the conversation she'd unwittingly stumbled into—but here she was, going to breakfast in the Great Hall with those very same girls. The only upside to all of this was that they were infinitely more preferable to Bellatrix. To Sirius himself, and Harry's future-dead parents.

Once again, Hermione thanked her lucky stars that the Marauders seemed to be vacant from the premises.

Abigail stood by the red and gold chesterfield in the common room, her blond hair shimmering in the low light. Next to her stood Delilah, and beside her stood the gossiping girl who's name Hermione couldn't remember; the short, brown-haired one with the wide-set eyes and the wagging tongue. Everyone knew she had _A Thing_ for Sirius.

"Sorry I'm late," Hermione whispered, shuffling her books close to her chest in a way that she hoped would hide the crooked bent of her arm. Abigail smiled in an unconcerned fashion, as she seemed wont to do. Hermione couldn't really place her motivations.

"No worries," Abigail said. She introduced the two girls standing beside her. Delilah Smith—whom Hermione recognized—and the gossipy one, Minette, who everyone called Mindy _._ "We're not that late." Abigail continued, stepping towards the door. "We'll still get a spot. Seventh year privilege and all."

Hermione apologized again, out of habit. Abigail brushed off her words with a wave of her hand. The portrait swung open in front of them.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Come on, let's go." They did.

The walk towards the Great Hall resounded with the _pitter-patter_ of patent soles and the _clack_ of witches' heels; the portraits along the Grand Staircase chattering amongst themselves as they flitted from painting to painting, sometimes shrieking with laughter. When the four of them stepped onto the staircase—intending to make their way from the Gryffindor Tower to the main part of Hogwarts—the giant stone beast lurched and shuddered, swinging outwards. Hermione gripped her satchel close to her chest and widened her stance to try and find her balance.

She closed her eyes, soaking in the memories of when she'd been on this very same staircase, only younger and smaller. She recalled other memories from the Future-Past, where the stone smelt slightly damp and the acidic scent of burning beeswax candles wafted on the air. The murmur of the paintings lulled her into a comfortable trance. It brought a pang to her heart, these memories, but also strength, because **this** was what she was fighting for. This was what she'd come back to fix. If she remembered the good times, she could do this.

The stairs shuddered again. Hermione swallowed harshly, trying not to sway where she stood. Beside her she heard Abigail shuffling around, her black kitten heels clicking against the stone staircase as the contraption swung to a stop on the third floor.

"You feeling alright?" Abigail asked. Hermione nodded, finally opening her eyes.

"Hnh," she mumbled out in the positive. She couldn't seem to make herself speak above a whisper, no matter how hard she tried. "Just a bit tired."

"You **do** stay up an awful lot," Abigail agreed as they walked towards the Great Hall. When they arrived, Hermione was once again flooded with memories.

The hall was busier than what she was use to, on account of her actually arriving on time. Over to the far side of the chamber Hermione saw the Slytherins lounging about in piles of green. She didn't recognize any of them from a distance, and she didn't want to, but at the head of the table she spied a flash of white-blond hair that almost certainly belonged to a Malfoy, or someone related to the family. Immediately Hermione turned and looked the other way. She didn't want to know which one it was, and she didn't want to get involved with any of them in the slightest. Nightmares of Bellatrix were bad enough.

The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were going about their business, as per usual—one table friendly and talkative, the other studious—while the Gryffindor end was in an uproar. Butterbeers were being spilled. Letters were being dropped here and there as groups of students discussed the upcoming Quidditch match, while the more bookish of the bunch screeched at the others to _stop spilling food on my textbooks_ and _get your chocolate frogs out of my hair!_ The sight of it all—of all those heads, bobbing and weaving over the table, hands grasping for food, necks ringed with ties of red and gold—was so familiar that Hermione had to put a hand to her mouth to suppress her gasp. She almost dropped her books on the floor in the process.

Merlin. **This** was why she had been trying to stay away from. She needed the memories, but not this many. Not this much all at once.

Abigail turned to her. Not far off Delilah raised a dark eyebrow in question. Mindy was scanning the Gryffindor table for someone in particular, and paid them no mind at all.

"Are you alright?" Abigail repeated. Hermione nodded, but her shakes were getting worse. Her shakes were becoming **visible** , which was a problem in a crowded spaces like this.

"Fine," she mumbled. "I'm just tired."

 _She's weird_ Delilah mouthed to Abigail. Abigail gave her an unimpressed glare. Hermione pretended that she hadn't seen it.

There was a commotion from the far end of the Gryffindor table; raised voices over what sounded like a plate being _cracked_ , followed by shouts. Although the whole house was in chaos, it appeared the upper years were far worse at behaving. Hermione wasn't surprised by this, and didn't pay too much attention to it, nor did she take stock of who was involved. Antics like that had been commonplace in her time, too.

"There!" Mindy gasped, a blush staining her cheeks as she gestured to the table, walking ahead of the rest of them. "There, it's him!"

"Mindy," Delilah sighed. "Give it a rest."

Hermione looked up to see whom they were pointing to, then wished she hadn't. Because there was **Sirius**. On time for breakfast, and sitting in the center of the seventh year sprawl across from Lily and James. Peter was sitting beside Lily, and Remus was beside Sirius, who was laughing at some joke or another. No wonder Hermione hadn't seen them in the common room.

The eldest Black was dressed in a casual, devil-may-care way, his tie loose around his neck as it pooled across the bench he was slumped over. His heavy black robe was slipping down one shoulder to cover his hand. Sirius was resting his elbow on the table, his cheek balanced against his other palm. Beside him Remus leaned in and commented on something. Sirius leaned away, rolling his arm across the top of the table to let it fall back with a _flop_. Slender fingers peaked out from behind the rim of that long black sleeve. He laughed, exposing his teeth. As Hermione watched, the Pure-blood wizard reached up, pushing aside jet black curls that fell diagonally across his forehead. The minute he removed his hand, those same inky curls fell back across his eye, thick and dark and damn-near lustrous in the light.

No. Oh no. He was breathtaking lovely, even from a distance. Seeing Sirius smile like the sun with teeth like bone made Hermione feel weak in the worst possible ways, because the man she'd known had never smiled like that—at least not around her—and this was just one more thing in a long list of things that had been taken from him. **This** was what Sirius had been, before everything went wrong. Merlin, the thought of him being wrecked was absolutely inconsolable. She was drowning in their collective future misery. She had to look away.

"Lily!" Mindy called out, waving her hand. Lily peaked her head out from behind James' broad shoulder, leaning over the table to look in their direction. "Lily, hi!" Mindy's frantic waving increased. Delilah scoffed loudly, rolling her eyes.

"Give it a rest, Mins," The other girl said. "Evan's smart. She'll see right through you."

"No she won't!" Mindy began, but already the rest of the Marauders were turning around, looking towards them. Sirius was looking too. Immediately Hermione averted her gaze and stepped behind Abigail, trying to keep herself out of sight. She kept her eyes trained to the floor.

"You know, I think I **am** feeling a bit queasy." Hermione began. Abigail turned towards her. She felt someone else staring at her, too, and the clicking _switch_ of Bellatrix's heels striking against the stone floors as she paced, not far off. "I think I'm going to head back."

"Are you sure?" Abigail began, but then there was a loud, sharp whistle; the clatter of a full pint of Butterbeer falling over. The sound of Lily shrieking.

"James!" she hollered. "AGAIN!"

"Here!" James said, standing up and waving like mad. His Butterbeer had spilled, and Lily was mopping it up with a napkin before it stained the side of her textbook. Harry's future-father was grinning ear to ear. "Here! Come join us in the pit of depravity!"

"We are not a pit!" Lily declared, finally giving up on the napkins and tugging out her wand instead. "James, sit!"

But James wasn't listening. James was preening like a peacock and crazily wiggling his eyebrows as he looked towards Sirius. Hermione couldn't see the other boy's expression from where she was standing. Delilah was already walking forward with Mindy, and Abigail was joining them, re-shouldering her satchel.

"Come on then," she said. "Maybe after breakfast, you can go see Madame Pomfrey?"

They were watching her. They were **all** watching her. Lily was watching her too. So was he. Hermione knew he was, because she could hear Bellatrix hissing and spitting with rage behind her.

"Alright," Hermione said, nodding carefully. Abigail didn't really wait for her answer; she just hummed in confirmation and kept on walking. Hermione quickly stepped after her, to prevent herself from standing alone and drawing more attention to her person.

The walk to the table took forever, and the ground was spinning beneath her. Her chest felt tight with labored breaths. Hermione clutched her satchel of books close, but with her bad arm it was hard to keep her hold on them. Being around Sirius was bad enough, but with Lily and James and Remus in close proximity it was like sitting at a table full of ghosts. Future ghosts, who didn't realize they were dead yet. She didn't want to do this.

James laughed about something; he was teasing someone, but his words sounded strangely muffled inside her ears. The rest of the noise in the Great Hall was rising, creating an uncomfortably loud din that soon turned into a roar.

"Filthy," Bellatrix fumed, twirling around her ankles in plumes of smoke as she skittered across the floor like a spider. "Filthy traitor, Mudblood-lover—"

"James, enough," Hermione heard Lily say, then "Sirius. Sirius, **stop** —"

"Here," said someone. That someone sounded like Remus, but he was too young to be Hermione's Remus. There was a shuffling noise on the bench. "Squeeze in."

"Thanks," Abigail said to the future-Professor-Lupin, setting down her books with a _thud_. "Delilah, want to squeeze too?"

"No, I'm with Mindy."

"Alright."

Hermione was almost at the table. Her arm spasmed, her back shaking. Her vision was greying out. Panic attack. Was this a panic attack? Hermione Granger did **not** get panic attacks, but it was the ghosts. The ghosts were there, closer than in her memories, and _focus, Hermione. Focus, focus, focus, remember your task_ —

"Hey Luv," Sirius said, and suddenly he was there beside her, looming over her in shades of black and white and grey. His red tie was askew around his throat like a slash of scarlet blood dripping downwards. His voice was soft but oddly quick, and the words themselves were rushed. "Here, let me get that."

"Sirius!" Lily snapped in warning from the other side of the table.

Hermione felt a hand much larger than hers slide beneath the strap of her satchel: the one that was digging into her arm. Fingers slipped between the leather of her bag and the wool of her robe and lifted _up_ , removing the heavy schoolbag from her shoulder with ease. Very carefully, Sirius disentangled the bag from her body to drape it over his. Hermione made sure to keep her eyes on the floor. She made sure not to look at him directly.

"Thank you, Sirius," she said softly, without really thinking it through. She heard him draw in a sharp breath and saw him shift his weight, moving closer. He reached behind her and put his hand to the center of her back between her shoulder blades, palm pressing flat to her skin as if to steady her.

Sirius was always like that with everyone—physical and friendly—but Hermione's heart stopped all the same, because the shakes. He could feel the **shakes** if he was touching her like that, and what if he said something?

He didn't.

"Want a seat?" he asked, still cheerful and almost inconsolably nice. Hermione still wouldn't look him in the eye. He smelt like Butterbeer; like wood smoke and dry wool. She tried not to think of the conversation she'd overheard in her dormitory, and about how this would look to the others, because Hermione could put two and two together and she knew what they'd be thinking after they saw this.

Sirius was friendly with everyone, until he wasn't. Sirius put his hands on all the girl's backs and called all the girls _luv_ with a smile.

"Alright," Hermione said. Sirius leaned into her, his forearm pressing against her spine as he pushed her towards the table. His other hand gripped the strap of her satchel. Hermione was shivering, and she knew that he felt it; she knew that **he** knew, because his fingers pressed down in a reassuring manner, but he didn't say anything. He just kept on staring straight ahead, his head held high as he talked to the others. Chatting, as if nothing was wrong.

Sirius Orion Black was so nice it hurt. She hadn't prepared for this, and Hermione ached.

"Can I sit here too?" Mindy asked him, her voice pitched strangely high.

"No you can't," the boy said, and suddenly there was a sneer beneath his voice that hadn't been there before. "Seat's taken."

Sirius was nice. He was nice and he called all the girls _luv_. Hermione had decided he did, so it was A Fact. There was no room in her mind for anything else.

In a slow, careful manner Hermione made her way over to the table, trying to hide her wobbling hands beneath her robe and stopping herself from clutching her injured arm too close to her chest. She kept her eyes trained on the food. In front of her she could make out the bottom half of Lily's face from across the table, her lips puckering into a frown. She could see James finally sitting down with a _plop_ to swing his arm around Lily's shoulders, leaning in for a kiss.

There was a spot on the bench where Sirius had been sitting, wide enough for two people. When they got near he leaned over Hermione, his hand still on her back as he pushed his plate aside to make room for hers. He directed her into the empty space on his right.

Hermione followed blindly. Once she was seated Sirius' hand drifted away, his slim fingers trailing upwards in a casual manner before he reached for the strap of her satchel; he set the bag down between them with a _thud_ , clambering over the bench.

It was only when the Pure-blood wizard was finally settled that Hermione realized that he'd sat down so that that her bad arm was cushioned between the two of them; that he was sitting beside her in such a way that no one could accidentally bump it, but he wasn't jostling her either. He was giving her space, cocooning her body with his. Unwanted tears pricked at her eyes. It took everything Hermione had not to burst out crying. It had been such a waste of a man, what had been done to Sirius. She hated Voldemort. She hated Azkaban. She hated **Peter,** sitting beside Lily all cherub-faced and sweet. She hated them all for the mess they'd made of the future-dead-wizard sitting next to her. He was a ghost, but he didn't know it yet.

"We haven't been properly introduced," someone said. Hermione managed to raise her head just enough to meet Lily's eyes. **Harry's** eyes, staring out of Lily's face. The girl was beautiful, with auburn hair and skin like porcelain, her robes immaculate and her nails manicured. Her burnished locks were tucked behind one ear, the length of them trailing down her front in lazy curls. Evan's smile was warm, but oddly tight.

"I'm Lily. Lily Evans. This idiot next to me is James." She nodded her head in her boyfriend's direction, then stood up and leaned forward a bit in her seat, her hand outstretched as if to shake Hermione's.

Immediately Hermione felt her heart sink deep in her chest, because she was being put on the spot. Her arm hurt so badly that she didn't know if she could lean forward without bumping it, but she had to try.

She was shifting forward in her seat, attempting to reach over, when a smooth but somewhat angry voice spoke next to her ear.

"You can shake her hand later, Lil," Sirius said. Even though there was humor to his tone, his words came off like a command. There was an odd, nasty undercurrent to them. "I mean have you **seen** the table? In a war between your sleeves and the beans, the beans will win. You're going to get food everywhere."

"A ha!" crowed James, snapping his fingers and wagging them in Lily's face. "You see? I'm not the only messy one here! Lies! Smoke and lies! I see right through you, you minx."

Lily glared at him, then at Sirius in particular. Hermione couldn't understand what passed between them, but after a moment Lily sunk back down in her seat. She turned towards Hermione, still smiling, but her grin was forced.

"Very well," she said, not unkindly. "Later then. Are you feeling off, by any chance? You look a bit pale."

Beside her, Hermione felt Sirius stiffen. His fingers visibly curled against the wood of the table, and he moved closer to her. Sirius opened his mouth to speak, the words forming on his lips, but before he could Abigail beat him to it.

"She's queasy," the blond girl said, piping up from the other side of Remus. Abigail picked at a breakfast roll with her fingers, tearing off little chunks as she swallowed them. "Long night, no sleep." Remus looked back and forth between the two, his gaze tired but content.

"Ah," Lily said, still sounding not-quite-convinced. Hermione gave her a weak smile and a shallow nod, the whispered out a stunted _I was studying_ to reassure her. This seemed to placate Harry's future-mother momentarily. She smiled and went back to her meal, and Hermione said nothing more.

The conversation moved on without her.

It was strange, sitting there with The Marauders; with a table of too-young ghosts that didn't quite realize they were dead. The world around her seemed to be thick with molasses—like she was swimming in cotton—and Hermione found it hard to concentrate, her thoughts in tangles. Sounds went from muffled to suddenly too sharp, and it was impossible to follow the conversation that was going on, much less engage in it.

She sat with her gaze trained on her plate, picking at her food, but she didn't eat it. Hermione told herself that she needed to eat, but she couldn't seem to remember how to do that too. There was a warm, radiating presence next to her that she was familiar with, but she was having a hard time placing it; a lean figure that was much taller than her, made of greys and blacks and whites with a single slash of red around its neck. The presence moved sometimes, usually towards her. Other times it would reach across the table for a slice of bread, or it would laugh at a joke, but the tone of its voice was soft. Hermione didn't really pay attention to it, except for the brief moment that she registered that it wasn't a threat. Maybe it was the pain potion that was addling her brain, she decided. Her mind was elsewhere, on other things.

Halfway through the meal, Hermione realized there was a hand on her back.

It was a reassuring pressure, this hand; a steady pressure that helped stabilize her shakes. Slowly, Hermione began to pay more attention to the palm that was resting against the middle of her spine in an almost deceptively casual manner, its fingers spread. As a thumb stroked back and forth in lazy swipes, Hermione blinked numbly, looked towards the left where its owner was sitting.

Looking was a mistake.

Sirius was close. **Much** closer than before, and definitely hovering, his body angled towards hers even as he talked to James across the table, his elbow braced on the wood and his face braced against his free hand. Suddenly everything about where she was—everything about him—came crashing back to Hermione in devastating, soul-crushing focus. It was in the way that Sirius was so haphazardly dressed, as if he'd just gotten out of bed and rushed to the hall. How his robes were falling all the way down his right arm and pooling in woolen folds around his fingertips. It was the messy tie and the reckless way that he held himself; in the tousled black hair and bedroom eyes and thick inky eyelashes that would make any rational person—anyone who **wasn't** Hermione, imagining a dead man—practically swoon with delight.

Seventeen year-old Sirius was lively and animated, and when he smiled his grin was bright, sucking the oxygen out of her lungs and leaving her wasted.

When Hermione's shaking got worse, Sirius didn't say anything. His hand simply pressed more firmly against her spine, fingers stretching, and after he finished laughing at something James said, he turned towards her in a casual way, his hand still on her back like it was No-Big-Deal. His other hand remained braced against his cheek, his tousled hair falling diagonally across his face.

"You finding everything okay?" he asked. Hermione could hear the words beneath the words, and immediately she knew what he was really asking. Reckless, the future-dead Sirius was, and dangerously nihilistic—this one was too—but he'd always been able to put two-and-two together. The steadying hand on her back said as such.

"Yes," Hermione bit out. It was a lie.

Sirius stared down at her, his cheek squishing against his palm, his pewter grey eyes unnervingly pale beneath too-dark eyelashes and heavy eyelids that were partially lowered. Sirius' eyes were large and slightly tilted towards the corners, his black eyebrows thick and sharply cut across his face. Hermione stared at him and said nothing, biting down on her bottom lip to stop it from trembling. She'd been this close to him before, but she'd never stared at him for longer than a moment. She'd never met his gaze. She'd been too afraid to do so, and now she couldn't seem to stop.

Pure-blood prince with the heart of a brawler, Sirius was. Slightly feral and the Slytherin-that-wasn't. Everyone knew him for what he was.

"That so?" he said in answer to her lie. Hermione held her injured arm close to her chest, cradling it. As she did Sirius' expression grew strained. His hand swept down to the small of her back, his fingers pressing more firmly against her spine. She was shaking beneath his fingers, and she knew he could see it. His smile was fake, and Hermione knew it was fake because his eyes were sad.

"The food is shite, isn't it?"

 _Pain is awful, isn't it?_ was what Hermione heard instead. Mindy was watching them. So was Lily.

"No it isn't!" Mindy cut in. Sirius ignored her.

"I guess so," Hermione said, coughing to clear her throat. Sirius' expression was beginning to take on signs of distress.

"Want me to sneak some food from the kitchens afterwards? The good stuff?" he asked.

 _Want me to find something for the pain?_

" **Yes** ," said James emphatically, slamming his fists down on the table across from them. "Yes, **lets**."

"No, let's not," Lily said. She pointed to Sirius, visibly aggravated. "Sirius—Sirius, you tell James **no**. I am not bailing you two out again—"

Remus laughed. Hermione tried not to think about anything at all she gave Sirius a watery smile, fighting back tears. She could hear the _click_ of a witch's heels; the _tap, tap, tapping_ of broken nails drumming against the wooden table and the hiss of breath. She tried to remember her plan.

"Thank you Sirius," she said softly. "That's so sweet of you."

This wasn't part of her plan.

Sirius' pupils widened a bit as she said his name, the feral glint to them growing more pronounced. He ran his hand up to the middle of her back, then down again.

"No problem, Luv," he said. Even though there was a sharp edge to his voice, in his features and in the way that he held himself, Hermione heard something warm behind it, too. She could **feel** that warmth in the hand on her back. Sirius had been a beautiful boy. And all of it had been taken from him, ripped out like ribs.

"Never," James was saying from across the table, grinning at Sirius like a wolf. Both of them turned to look at Harry's future-dead father. "You're **never** going to live this down."

"James!" Hissed Lily in warning, but Hermione wasn't paying attention to her. Because there, hovering over the table like a Dementor—whispering around Sirius in plumes of ink—was Bellatrix. Bellatrix Lestrange, her nails _clicking_ against the table as she crawled over the beans and eggs on all fours, her face twisted into a skeletal mask of rage.

She reached Sirius in a blink of an eye. She reared up, her eyes turning to blackened pits and mouth opening to an impossible size as she wrapped her ethereal tendrils around her baby cousin and screamed at him.

"TRAITOR!" she screeched. Her voice was as loud as a Banshee's, her trail of ink whipping erratically back and forth. "TRAITOR! TRAITOR! FILTHY LITTLE BLACK!"

Hermione winced. She shrunk back in her seat. She bit down on her lip until it bled, curling her hand around her injured arm as the pain spiked, because Bella was screaming and she was the only one who could hear it. The pressure of Sirius' hand on her back increased.

"Luv, you okay?"

Faster. She needed to work **faster**.


	4. The Lost Boy

Chapter IV: The Lost Boy

* * *

Hermione was bleeding from the lip.

Sirius was okay with the _concept_ of blood, but after he saw her sitting beside him, swaying visibly, he decided he was specifically not okay with blood being on **her**. His memories of Grimmauld Place—before he'd run away—were made up of varying shades of crimson. On his calmer days where he could detach from his past and float in a numb, fugue-like state, he reasoned that he associated red with his younger years because that was the color of the floor whenever mother dearest beat his head in.

The broomstick was her favorite tool, followed by that golden candelabra that sat on the mantle of the first floor fireplace: a gift from their neighbor Mrs. Chapswick, handed out as a party favor during a Pure-blood political fundraiser. Walburga only used unforgivables when she was really, really angry. Unfortunately for Sirius, her fits of rage happened on a daily basis by the time he hightailed it out of that pit.

Prongs—who didn't know all of it, but knew enough—unironically called those years _the Dark Times_. He always mentioned them with a grin and a laugh, as if to say _thank Merlin_ ** _that's_** _over, right mate_? Sirius would laugh too, albeit a bit nervously. He would run an unsteady hand through his messy black hair and pull out a muggle cigarette and start smoking to hide the shakes, because what else could he do? _Prongs doesn't know_. _None of them know_ , he would assuage that angry, snapping thing that lurked behind his teeth like a Dementor. The frequent blackouts from his childhood had nothing to do with the titular moniker of _the Dark Place_ , and the disrespect wasn't intentional.

Potter was his best friend. He wouldn't be cruel like that.

The thing about being a witch or a wizard was that you didn't really bleed out, no matter how badly you were being beaten. Your skull could be crushed, or your veins could be opened, nails ripped out or ears sliced off, but it didn't matter in the end. So long as you had your trusty wand, everything was eventually fixed. The only things you really had to watch out for were curses and unforgivables, and Walburga had been cognizant of that. Sirius had picked up the knowledge, too. It was why he hit back with his fists.

Before Hermione had come along—and he'd gotten all twisted—there'd been the mess of his sixth year. A different sort of mess than the one Sirius currently found himself in, because it had been close to the time where he'd run away from the Blacks. His memories from that time were a little bit hazy. He did remember standing in front of a transfigured mirror in a third-floor broom closet, a good thirty minutes after he'd gotten into an ugly, snarling fight with a Slytherin prefect. This had been followed by fucking Anna Van Wezt amongst the magical mop buckets and reams of tissue paper.

The fight had been about something the Pure-blood had said—he couldn't remember the exact words—but the bloke had gotten in a good hit across his jaw just the same. Soon afterwards there'd been the _drip-drip-drip_ of blood from his split lip onto the floor. Anna had been there, with her silky blond hair and large blue eyes. She'd tugged on his perpetually off-kilter tie as they'd traipsed down the hall, and once they'd found a suitable location he'd shoved her bodily into the storage cabinet, his lips on hers as her fingers slid through his hair.

Sirius distinctly remembered the mop bucket digging into his shin as he hoisted Anna against the wall of the closet. He remembered her gasps and the way she'd gripped the hair at the nape of his neck. Fucking got rid of the nervous energy, on the good days. So did the smokes, but McGonagall liked to confiscate the slim white sticks when she could. He just got so angry, all the time. He got angrier and angrier, until the rage spilled forth like vomit after a solid night of drinking with the rest of the boys. Sirius couldn't control his tongue, and he refused to cry.

After they'd finished fucking, Sirius had done up his slacks and transfigured a mop bucket into a wall-length mirror, to make sure he looked semi-presentable. The red marks on his neck from where Anna had scratched him could stay, but the blood would get McGonagall on his arse, so it would not. He'd been put on a warning system at the beginning of the year.

If he didn't calm down, they were shipping him off to St. Mungo's. Prong's parents—his legal guardians now, but no one talked about that in polite society—had given the school their blessings. There was no way Sirius was going down without a fight. He didn't want the nurses anywhere near him, with their potions or their pitying looks. _I'm better_ , he'd told Prongs through his sixth smoke of the day when the judgement had come down, but he'd had an episode that summer—a really, really bad one that he didn't quite remember—and it had fucked up his chances.

Misguided, charity-case Sirius Black: roving Pure-blood prince who'd turned into a frothing mad dog and stayed like that. Merlin's beard, no wonder his animagus was a grim.

In this memory tied to blood and the color red, Sirius remembered just standing there: he remembered staring at his reflection in the mop-bucket mirror, loathing everything about his crooked tie and ripped white shirt. The blood on his split bottom lip was stark. Sirius didn't like looking at himself in the mirror that much, even though he knew his looks were the only thing he had going for him. It reminded him too much of where he'd come from, and the pale skin and pale grey eyes were too similar to the set that belonged to his little brother: the one he'd left behind with Walburga.

Sirius reached up to wipe at his bloody mouth, his long fingers running across his gums. His hand came back ruddy.

"You fight so much, baby," Anna said with a crooning, self-satisfied lilt. She stood with her chest to his back and her hands sliding around his front. Her fingers scraped at his exposed skin as she kissed his throat. Her blond hair was more tousled than his.

"I love it when you fight," she continued. Sirius had stared at nothing, eyes unfocused as he'd buttoned up his shirt. "You look so wild when you're bloody."

At that, Sirius shook her off with a shrug of his shoulders, his face a blank mask. He had done up his tie. "Sod off," he said.

Anna was tall enough that he could see her expression over his shoulder. The tilt of her lips said she was upset.

Not so with Hermione, Sirius thought now—if she'd been standing behind him, he couldn't have seen her. Hermione was all he compared things to, these days. She was small enough to fold up into a suitcase. She was even smaller in person when he literally saw her shaking through her clothes. When Sirius pressed his hand to to the ridge of her spine, he could feel her bones through the thick black fabric. She wasn't eating. She **really** wasn't. No wonder he never caught her in the Great Hall.

Sirius had come down to the Gryffindor common room early that morning, rushing out of bed half-awake in the hopes that he'd finally catch her before class. He did a lot of that these days, even though he stayed up all night out of worry. His evening hours will consumed with watching her meander around Hogwarts on the Marauder's Map before predictably venturing into the Forbidden Forest.

There was something strange with her signature on the map that he'd noticed—an error that was popping up, completely hiding her from view for large stretches of time that had nothing to do with the woods. Sometimes the signal would flicker like she was dying, before she blinked straight out of existence, and the first time it had happened he'd nearly lost it. Sirius tried not to think too much about it now, surmising that she was using a charm. Hermione was very good at staying out of sight in general. Often Sirius couldn't corner her until Potions, and his hopes for seeing her that day before class had been minimal.

She hadn't been in the Gryffindor common room when he'd skidded out of the dormitory that morning. She hadn't been walking down the nearby staircases, and a quick look at the Marauder's Map informed she was **nowhere** , which meant that she was using that blasted charm again. Half-awake and feeling jittery, Sirius had headed down to the Great Hall with the rest of his mates. As they'd walked he'd tried to act normal. He smiled at whichever girl sent a friendly look his way; he slung his arm over Prong's shoulder, nudging him good-naturedly in the ribs while they loudly talked shop about their upcoming Quidditch match against the Slytherins. When they reached the Great Hall, he sat himself beside Moony, as was customary: hiding his shakes behind a pint of Butterbeer and laughing through his drink while Lily yelled at Prongs for trying to nab a kiss.

Peter was quiet that morning, pouring over his textbook in preparation for a second period test. He asked for Sirius to pass him the plate of scones and the butter dish, and Sirius complied without thought. He then buried his face in his drink and tried to ignore the stares.

There were rumors flying around, hard and fast, just like Lily had said there would be. "The purest of the Pure-blood princes had a real girlfriend" was the most prevalent one, and the loudest:

 _Of course he's still friendly, Patricia, but you_ _know_ _he's off the market. He's hitched himself to that new girl. The quiet one._

 _Merlin's beard, what do you think she did to enchant him?_

 _I know, right? No way that's normal._

Part of Sirius knew that he should stop the rumors, but he pressed his lips shut and sipped on his Butterbeer, pretending not to hear. Maybe ignorance was bliss. Everyone knew that he took care of his own, and if everyone thought that Hermione was **his,** they wouldn't dare touch her. Hermione didn't need to know what the other students thought, or what Sirius was letting them think. The more he churned the idea over, the better it sounded in his head.

After several minutes of fantasizing about the words _Hermione_ and _his_ strung together in a sentence, Sirius decided the idea was the best plan he'd thought of in years. He could make it work. He'd block Hermione's ears with cotton so she wouldn't hear the rumors, and he'd keep on carrying her books and sitting next to her in class and he'd hover, hover, hover, so that when the others looked towards her small, bedraggled form, they'd wouldn't see her shakes: they'd just see Sirius' back instead. As he refilled his mug with Butterbeer, his cheeks feeling hot, Sirius told himself he wouldn't ask for more. Hermione was good and perfect and sweet, and good people didn't deserve to cry. **He** was going to be a good person, this time, for her. Mother dearest and her claims of perpetual disappointment could suck it.

Then a miracle happened, and Hermione did show up at the hall. Sirius, pretending to be only mildly interested, just sat there and thought _finally_. At last he'd outsmarted Hermione in her quest to keep herself hidden, and she'd slipped up. The witch approached with a small group of seventh year girls that he didn't know too well. Sirius glared at James, willing him to stay quiet before he said something stupid to break the ruse, but even through his anxiety there was a part of him that had been floating. Maybe he could take care of Hermione after they graduated from Hogwarts, too.

"Here!" Prongs said, waving like mad across the table. His Butterbeer spilled. Lily let out a hiss, mopping up the spill with a bright red napkin. "Here! Come join us in the pit of depravity!"

Sirius reached across the table to strangle him, because if Prongs blew his cover Merlin help him, he was going to eat it. Moony grabbed his arm in return, pulling him back.

"Just breathe, Padfoot," he said with a watery smile. It was only then that Sirius realized that his hands were visibly trembling. Prong's smile faded a bit into something that resembled concern as he caught on to the movement. "Breathe, mate. He doesn't mean anything by it."

"Padfoot, you alright?" James asked.

Then the girls had arrived. Prongs dropped the subject and grinned. Sirius covered up his own slip with a grin, too, but it quickly tumbled once Hermione got within range and he realized he hadn't outsmarted her in anything. She was just having a really, really bad day, and she wasn't all there in the head.

The witch was white as a sheet as she stood sandwiched in between two seventh years. The dark circles around her eyes that were so deep-set that Sirius immediately wondered if she'd been glamouring her face to hide them. When Prongs waved the gaggle of witches over, she walked with such a noticeable limp that the heel of her left foot clicked oddly against the floor. Merlin, he'd never seen her this bad before. He'd been so stupid. Everyone was staring, or politely pretending **not** to stare, and as Hermione curled in on herself and whispered apologies while she made her way forward, Sirius knew that the rumors about her would be even worse tonight. He managed to stay seated for a whole ten seconds—albeit with Remus continuing to tug on his robe, whispering "don't be stupid"—before he bolted out of his seat like a jackrabbit when she began to sway on the spot.

"Hey Luv," he heard himself say, as if through a dream. "Here, let me grab that." He reached for her too-heavy bag, trying to move between her and the others so they couldn't keep gawking. Fuck them for just watching, and for doing nothing. None of them understood.

"Thank you, Sirius," she said in that breathy, not-quite-there way, and even though she was ill Sirius once again rocketed to cloud nine. He always did when she thanked him.

But Hermione had a really hard time walking over to the table. She had an even harder time sitting down. Eventually Sirius had to grip her good elbow and put a hand to her back just to complete the motion, and by the time she was settled and the dust was cleared he was half out of his mind with worry. Had she been this thin a week ago when he'd accidentally touched her in Potions? He didn't think so, and while Sirius **did** have memory problems, his recollections of her were always crystal clear.

Hermione knew that people were staring. He knew that she knew, because her cheeks were flushed with shame and she kept her head tilted towards her lap, her good hand clenching and unclenching anxiously in her robes as that wild mess of honey-brown curls tumbled around her face like a lion's mane. Sirius bared his teeth and curled towards her, trying to hide her with arm and his his back. He tried not to curl **too** hard, because he wanted to be more like a well-worn blanket, only he knew that he wasn't. He was terrified that if he curled too hard he'd crush her.

"Given any thought to my proposal?" he asked. Hermione looked at him blearily, her line of sight going straight through him.

"Pardon?"

"What I asked, about going up on the broom."

"Oh," the witch said, turning away, but she never finished her sentence, seeming to lose her train of thought.

Sirius didn't press it. He spooned bland porridge into a bowl and soft bread onto a plate and put it in front of her, in-between stroking his hand up and down her back. When he'd had the shakes, all he could stomach was tasteless gruel, so he thought it would help. Unfortunately Hermione couldn't even reach for the plate herself, so he moved it closer.

His friends—for once—said nothing. Sirius kept his customary jokes short and terse. When Lily reached across the table to shake Hermione's hand, he almost bit her head off, and he refused to let anyone sit near her. They wouldn't be gentle enough, and if they bumped her bad arm he was going to whip out his wand and use a curse to strip their skin. Hermione kept her gaze down, her hair falling in giant, unruly waves around her shoulders in such a way that Sirius desperately wanted to bury his face in it. He wasn't doing too well either, because his memory was blanking out in spots and he couldn't recall everything that had been said. In between fits of anxiety, he tried to smile and laugh with the others, because Hermione didn't want any more attention on herself and him being out of sorts would definitely do it. Then she started swaying so hard in her seat he could no longer ignore it, so he turned to her, asking for something. He couldn't remember what, exactly, but it might have been about pain potions.

Hermione shuddered real hard—just once—and looked up at him, meeting her gaze.

Black circles were around her eyes, and her eyes were black too. Her mouth was an inky pit, like she had swallowed oil and it had eaten up her insides: no teeth, and no tongue. Black was seeping out of the pit like tendrils, to stain her lips.

Merlin, was that a **curse**?

Sirius shook his head, trying to clear it. The vision disappeared, but the shadows beneath her eyes did not. Hermione smelt like pine needles, and from those partially opened, dry, cracking lips came the unmistakable scent of pain potions. Had her lips been this dry the last time he'd been this close? He didn't think so. She was bleeding on the bottom one, where the skin had split. Instantly, he knew he hated it.

Hermione toppled to the side as if all her energy had simply left her. She fell in such a way that the others couldn't miss it.

Prongs let out a loud "woah!" Lily gasped and reached across the table to grab her before she fell, knocking over the pot of beans with her sleeve. Sirius caught her first. He had to scramble a bit, his arm clumsily fumbling around his back, but once she was secure she fit into the crook of his arm like she'd always meant to be there: her head lolling against his shoulder, her body sagging bonelessly against his as he called her name. She was tiny, and not in a good way. It wasn't like he'd touched her a lot, but she hadn't been this frail before.

"Hermione?" he said. His hand was in her hair before he could help himself, sweeping it away from that pale, feverish face. "Luv, are you okay?" He tucked a thick brown lock behind the curve of his ear, curling around her further so that he could bring his face down to her level, speaking low. When he allowed himself to run a thumb back and forth across her cheek, next to her ear, she didn't move from his grasp.

"Padfoot, she doesn't look too good," James said. Across the table, one of the girls that arrived with Hermione began speaking to him too.

"She hasn't been sleeping well," said the girl—a blond one with a cool expression that he vaguely remembered as _Abigail_. "She fell off the bed this morning."

He rubbed a hand up and down Hermione's shoulder as he tried to bring some feeling back to it. She was so cold. Her skin was smooth in that dry, papery way when someone hadn't drunk enough water and they were a bit dehydrated. Her lip was still bleeding from where it had split open, and her eyes were closed—perhaps to deal with the vertigo.

"Luv, are you alright?" His head was almost touching hers. Hermione reached up, rubbing with her good hand at her eyes. Her fingers quavered terribly.

"I'm—" she began.

Lily leaned towards them, reaching out and gesturing towards Hermione with her hands, as if she wanted Sirius to give the witch up.

"Sirius," she said, calm and tight. "She's sick. Give her to me, or take her to Madame Pomfrey."

"No," Hermione said. She was so weak she stayed slumped against her shoulder, and Sirius pulled her closer. "No, Abi... Abigail's right. I have been sleeping well. It's just the flu, I think."

"Sirius," Lily said. He finally turned to glare at her murderously. "She's sick. Take her to Pomfrey's."

"She already said no. Sod the fuck off."

Prongs slammed his hands down on the table, his face going peakish. He pointed a finger in Sirius's direction even as Lily went very still.

"Alright, you Pure-blood git," he declared. Remus groaned in frustration, throwing his own hands towards the air. "Listen. That's my future queen you're talking to there, so watch your filthy—"

"Merlin take me, you are **both** Pure-blood gits," Moony declared. Sirius bared his teeth at Potter and tried to remind himself it was a very, very stupid idea to switch into a grim at the table. "What is it with you two and fighting, first thing in the morning? I'm about to lose it, because you've been doing this for weeks."

"Sirius," Lily insisted like a broken muggle record. "Take her to Pomfrey's."

"No," Hermione said, a little bit louder than before. Sirius immediately turned back. The witch's eyes were open, and sleepy. She seemed like she was on the verge of tears. Sirius tucked another lock of hair behind her ear. When he did the witch's lips trembled, as she pressed them together. She quickly looked down, her expression fragile and distressed.

Sirius swallowed reflexively, wondering if he was making it worse. Had he made it worse? Had he made a mistake calling her _Luv_? What was he doing wrong?

"You okay?" he asked again, dreading the answer. He knew that she wasn't. _Smile, Sirius. Just keep smiling_.

Very carefully Hermione reached up, gently curling her fingers around his to remove his hand from her face. Sirius nearly died on the spot with despair.

"I'm just a bit tired," she said, but all Sirius heard was _she doesn't want me. She doesn't want_ ** _me_** _, no one wants me_. Hermione was trembling like a leaf in a windstorm, but even though Sirius knew that was just what happened when you had the shakes, a nasty little voice in the back of his brain told him that it was because he was holding her.

 _She doesn't want you._

"Need to lie down for a bit?" he asked. "Or help getting up?" He was trying so hard not to throw himself out a window, because she was physically shrinking away from him even as she said it. Hermione nodded _yes_ , and Sirius barely managed to talk himself back from the edge.

 _She still needs me. She needs help. I can do this_.

Not trusting himself to speak without his voice cracking harder, Sirius leaned to the side and grabbed her bag from where it sat between their feet on the floor, slinging it over his shoulder before reaching down again and grabbing his. Once settled, he adjusted his hold on Hermione, shuffling her from their seats on the bench while he tried not to drop her.

"Sirius, I'm serious. You need to take her to Madame Pomfrey—"

"Shut up, Lil'." His hair fell into his eyes, making it hard to see. Sirius reached up, running his fingers through the messy black waves to push it back from his forehead.

"Alright, that's it," Prongs declared, standing in a rush as he slammed his hands down for a second time. Lily turned to him, shushing him loudly to try to calm him. Hermione stumbled onto her feet, and Sirius tried not to bump her bad arm in the process. He needed to take a look at it the moment they were alone.

Keeping one arm wrapped around her waist—the other gripping her good hand—he led her towards the exit.

"Want me to tell Professor Lungroot that you won't make it to First Period?" Remus shouted after him, leaning away from the bench to watch them walk towards the big double doors at the end of the Great Hall.

"Tell him whatever you want!" Sirius shouted back, aiming for nonchalance to draw as little attention as possible, but it didn't work. Hermione's gait was rubbery to point where he was all but dragging her, and people were staring. He pressed his lips shut and said nothing more until he finally got them out of the hall.

Sirius didn't really know where he was going with Hermione, except for away. Not to Madame Pomfrey's, that was for sure, but her shakes were so bad she definitely needed to lie down and take a breather. He had to stick her somewhere safe—a place that only he knew. If he hid her away, no one could hurt her; no one could bash her head in with a broomstick or shout unforgivables at her because they'd decided they were in a bad mood. _Operation: Hide the Witch_ was in motion.

"Where to?" he said, continuing to keep his tone light— _act normal, you fool, it helps when people act normal_. He couldn't forget how she'd pushed his hand away from her face. Hermione wet her lips. She kept her eyes mostly closed and her gaze turned to the floor, her grip on his hand just a bit too desperate. Her fingers were thin.

"Moaning Myrtle," she mumbled. He didn't quite get it at first.

"What?" Sirius said, leaning in. A bed, probably. A bed in the attic, where she could sleep for the rest of the day and no one would look. He didn't really think she was up for climbing the stairs though, and what if she took it the wrong way when he showed her the chamber? He adored her to pieces, but he couldn't stand **that**.

"Moaning Myrtle," Hermione said again, a little bit louder. She coughed suddenly—a very light cough, but one that made her double over all the same. While Hermione lurched forward, her hand clapping to her mouth to contain the soft _huff_ , Sirius struggled to keep his hold on her. It would have been easier to straight-up carry her, but they were already well on their way down the corridor.

Hermione drew her hand back, her sleepy eyes widening in horror. She tried to quickly wipe her palm across the front of her robe, but Sirius saw the red nonetheless.

 _Merlin, no._ He tried not to think about the blood, but it was impossible.

"There's a first floor lavatory—the girl's," Hermione said breathlessly, still scrubbing her hand against her front. "A ghost is there. No one uses it. I just—I need to refresh myself. Wash my face."

"Alright," he said. Sirius couldn't keep the misery from his voice.

Hermione flinched, looking up at him for the first time since the table. Sirius blinked rapidly to stop himself from crying and looked straight ahead, following the witch's half-coherent instructions to the lavatory. His brain remained sluggish like taffy.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 _*slinks in like a dirty little thief with a cryptid update*_

 _*slinks out*_


End file.
